Emily's Journey: To Know & Follow Hard After You

Just to make you smile

2011-09-21T16:02:00.005Z

A while ago I was teaching some of my students about writing simple, clear sentences. They always want to write these long, flowery, verbose things and consequentially, their writing is very difficult to understand. I asked them to write three simple sentences about their favorite sport. This guy cracked me up, so I thought I would share it with you.

“The sport that I like the most is swimming. Swimming allows you to exercise your entire body. Unfortunately, I can’t swim.”

Just to make sure you're smiling, here are a few recent pictures of our little ham :-)

"yum, yum, yum, I love Cheerios!"

"The ocean is awesome!"

"One of my favorite pastimes - seeing who can roar the loudest, me or Daddy!"

"I LOVE food!!!!"

"For me! You shouldn't have!"

"Super baby!!!"

"Mush, Daddy!"

"iPhones, handy and also delicious!"

"Yes, if fact I am too cool for school!"

"Yup, I'm 11 months old - look at me go!!!"

Gina's Boys

2011-08-16T09:11:00.003Z

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
-Psalm 27:13-14

That's what I read this morning, and after I read it, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman I met on Sunday at church. Her name was Gina and she came in with the cutest little boys. Same height, toddling right on her heels, two years old. They started dancing around, and Savannah was watching them and squealing, so Gina and I struck up a conversation.

When Gina was pregnant she knew there was more than one baby. She was huge, and her stomach never stopped moving. Her husband worked for the government, so even though he showed up to work everyday most months he didn't get paid his salary. About halfway through her pregnancy she had to stop working because she could hardly stand and she was retaining so much fluid that she couldn't even close her hands to grasp anything. Her midwife got scared. She told Gina that she was going to die if she didn't give her money to go and perform ceremonies involving demon worship. Gina refused. She said that she was in the hand of God. Her midwife continued to tell her she was going to die everyday.

When her labor started, her midwife was expecting the worst. One baby came, then the next, then the next. Triplets!!! No C-section, no drama, no problems. Three healthy babies, one healthy mother. The midwife was amazed and that day she gave her life to the Lord. Gina was confident that she would see God's goodness and even when she didn't know how things would turn out, she was completely content waiting on Him.

I wish her story ended there; but there were only two little boys with her on Sunday. After the boys' first birthday, one of them got sick. He had a high fever and wouldn't stop vomiting. She took him to the hospital and found out that he had malaria and was severely dehydrated. They started treatment and then left him alone for hours, waiting for a bribe to come back into the room. Gina begged them to come and look at him again when he became lethargic and blood was climbing up the IV tube that was supposed to be giving him nutrients. In the end, he died in front of her. As she looked at me with tears in her eyes (and quite a few in mine as well) her face lit up with a huge smile and she said, “I don't have a single complaint against God for what happened to my son. All my life, He has taken care of me and He knows better than I do what my son needed. My son is with Him, and I will see him again. Right now I look at my other sons and I know I am blessed, but even if they were all taken away from me I would still know that I am blessed.”

I was floored by Gina's faith and strength. I was inspired by her joy; and I was humbled. After we chatted a while longer I sat down with Savannah and all I could think about was Romans 5:3-4:
We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Nobody likes suffering. Nobody likes pain and hurt and disappointment, but when we invite Jesus to come into our suffering, to be with us in our hurt, that's when suffering produces perseverance; and when God gives us the strength to persevere, we develop character; and from the fiber of our character, springs hope. Gina was filled with it.

Sometimes in the middle of our hurt we turn from God. We shut Him out and all we have is pain. God waits for us to invite Him in, so that He can change us. God has used so many difficult things in my life to make me who I am; to teach me more about myself and more about Him. I don't know what pain will come in my future, but I do know that God can use it to strengthen me and to make hope fill my heart and shine from my face. I am confident that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living and I'm waiting on Him.

It's not easy to get a good picture on a camera phone in a dark room :-) Gina and her two boys. Their names are in Balanta (her tribal language) but they translate to "God loves us" and "God loves you". The one who died was named "God loves me"

Lord, Show Your Power!

2011-08-01T21:53:00.004Z

A few days ago I was reading First Corinthians and I was struck by something in a new way. Paul opens chapter 2 with these words:
“When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.”
-1st Corinthians 2:1-5

As I read this, many questions started swirling around in my head. How many times have I prayed that God would give me just the right words? How many hours have I spent planning out exactly what I would say before I speak to a church in the US or a group of women here in Bissau? How many days have I spent praying that God would give me the clearest, most impactful words to share the gospel with a friend of family member?

All of that is certainly part of it, but if that's all I do to prepare, then I've missed the point entirely. Paul doesn't want the faith of the people to rest on man's wisdom. Why? Because it's insufficient. I don't want the message that God gives me to rest on my eloquence. Why? Because it's not enough. People's lives are not going to be changed by the Gospel unless the Holy Spirit comes with power. If I want to see lives transformed, I need to spend far less time searching for the perfect simile and far more time on my knees before an almighty God.

I was thinking about this when I gave Savannah her bath last night. Just this past week she's started to make the transition from playing in the water to playing with the water. While I was sitting next to the tub, she abandoned the rubber ducky that she had been vigorously squeaking between her gums, and decided that it was about time to check out this wet stuff she was surrounded by. She stared at the water carefully, leaned her head all the way to the side a few times, opened her hands and prepared herself. Then, slap, her arms sprang into action like a pouncing lion and her hands smacked each other as the water evaded her grasp. With a confused look on her face she tried again and again and again with the same lack of success.

What Savannah doesn't know is that you can't grab the water the same way that you grab a ball or a doll. It's not something you can pick up and turn around and examine from every angle like her toys. What we forget, is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ isn't reducible to a scripted sales pitch. The life changing power of the Holy Spirit, like the water in Savannah's bath, isn't something that can be grasped with my hand and controlled. No matter how long I stare at the words I want to say, carefully crafting them into the message I want to deliver; no matter how enthusiastic and ready I am; no matter how much I want to make an impact; like Savannah, I end up with a handful of nothing if I'm doing it on my own.

Being a Mom in Guinea-Bissau

2011-07-10T16:03:00.006Z

For the past week, my little 8 month-old Savannah has been saying “mom”. She doesn't know what it means, but it still melts my heart! Hearing her say my name got me thinking about the adventure of motherhood that started about a year and a half ago.

When I got pregnant with Savannah people asked me if I was nervous because I was going to be pregnant so long without going to the doctor. People asked me if I was worried about flying so much while I was pregnant. People asked me if I was scared about giving birth. People asked me if I was worried about bringing such a small baby back to Africa. People asked me all kinds of things, and much to their surprise the answer to pretty much all of their questions was no. As soon as we found out that we were having a baby I had a tremendous peace about the pregnancy and about her health and safety growing up in Africa.

Maybe I should've been a little nervous. Guinea-Bissau is one of the 5 poorest countries in the world, and because of that, disease and malnutrition run rampant. It was recently listed as the worst place in the world to be a mother, in part because of the high infant and child mortality. In Guinea-Bissau 10% of children die before their first birthday and 20% die before they reach the age of 5. In the US, those stats are 0.6% and 0.8%.

The thing is, I knew that God called Jason and I here. I knew that God gave us this baby. I knew that God loves her more I ever could. I knew that God could take care of my baby just as well here as He could in the US. And, I knew that if all that was true then God had a plan for this little girl that involved this time in Guinea-Bissau.

Sweet baby fresh out of the bath :-)

The thing that no one asked me was if I thought that I would be a good mom in Africa. That was the thing I wondered about. I knew that God could take care of my baby, what I didn't know is if I would be able to adjust to all that goes along with being a missionary in a third world country and being a mom.

Going from a family of two to a family of three is a huge step anywhere. Making the change from consulting only each other when making plans, to planning the whole day (and night) around a tiny unpredictable thing that can't even talk and changes every day, is a big adjustment! Add to that cloth diapers that dry on a line, cooking from scratch for all of our and her meals, no pediatrician around to answer all of my questions, and all of the work it takes just living in west africa, and that's a lot. Add to that the fact that we live so far away from our family so we don't have them around to babysit for, help with, or generally love on our baby girl. Add to that living in a culture that raises their children completely differently than my own and the stress of constantly having to decide when I'm going to be African and when I'm going to be American; and how in the world to be American in the middle of Africa. Roll all of that up into a big ball and plunk it in the lap of someone who likes to do things right and who doesn't thrive on surprises and uncertainty, and you see my dilemma.

Drying diapers on the line

Weighing Savannah with a luggage scale, Sydney's leash, and a bucket

Baby girl LOVES to eat!!!

Savannah will be nine months old this week, and since she came over to Guinea-Bissau when she was three months old she has now spent almost twice as much of her life in Africa as in America. I guess now's as good a time as any to ask myself how I'm doing.

I had to develop a little thicker skin when I was chastised for not feeding my five month old every two hours all night, or for bringing my non-walking baby outside in the 90 degree weather without socks and shoes on. I had to relax a little bit about Savannah's schedule when one of our neighbors passed away and women were wailing outside of our house for 48 hours. I had to offend some of my students when they come over two hours late to pick up their assignments and I couldn't see them because I was giving my baby a bath and then going to read her a story and nurse her and put her down for the night and I wasn't willing to be interrupted just because they didn't come on time.

Grading papers with my assistant on my knee and our faithful dog, Sydney

But, even with all of that, I'd say it's going really well. Savannah is growing like a weed, adapting like a pro to every little thing that comes along, and I am happy and confident. Is that because I, all of a sudden, discovered that I have amazing, previously untapped, mothering super powers? No, I don't think so. Partially I think it's because Jason and I both grew up with such amazing, dedicated mothers that set wonderful examples of mothering with grace and joy. And for the rest of it, I'm convinced that just like God had a purpose for Savannah growing up in Africa, He also had a purpose for me being a mom here. Even with all of things that I was uncertain about, everything is just working, and even going smoothly. God truly does give us grace for every situation exactly when we need it (and not a moment too soon!) and I'm so grateful to Him for the blessing of my little family here in Guinea-Bissau!

Savannah wants to touch EVERYTHING that mommy touches! Here she's learning a valuable lesson about reading labels :-)

Story time with Mommy, before Savannah was old enough to sit up.

Wow, knitting is confusing! Don't worry, Savannah, you'll get it!

My Mother's Eyes

2011-05-08T17:42:00.002Z

My daughter has my mother's eyes and it's wonderful and sad all at the same time. There's nothing like becoming a mom to make you realize how much you still need to learn from your own, and when I look into the adoring eyes of my biggest tiny fan I miss my mom so much! It's always been hard living an ocean away from my family – missing big events and so many little hugs – but it's even harder now that I have so much joy that I want to share with them.

My daughter is amazing. She laughs and cries and squeals and goos and shrieks with joy at the sight of me. She loves her life! She found her feet last week and ever since then she can't stop grabbing them. She started eating off of a spoon this month and every time she even sees a bib she gasps in delight. She's been working for months at perfecting her motoboat noise and now that she's finally got it, she does it whenever she's really happy to see someone.

As I marvel at this little miracle God has entrusted to me, I am amazed at how strong my need is to cherish and take care of her. When I look into her tiny little face and see the lacy blue eyes of my mother staring back at me I realize over and over again how blessed I am.

Happy mother's day Mom! I love you :-)

This is what was waiting for me when I got out of the shower this morning :-)

Birthday Girl

2011-04-13T07:44:00.003Z

Well we have a 14 year-old mother of 5 living with us. 14 in dog years that is - Happy 2nd birthday to our Australian Cattle Dog, Sydney.

Syd likes to sleep on soft things, but when we got back we couldn't find the little rug that we had for her. I looked in all of the stores here but no one has rugs right now. I bought her a hand towel, but it just gets all wadded up under her. I decided that for her birthday I wanted to do something nice for her.

I had some extra fabric from past projects laying around so I got online and figured out how to crochet a rag rug - there was only one problem, I didn't have a crochet hook big enough for the job. Never fear, Jason to the rescue! I described what I needed and he whittled it for me out of a wood scrap from the shop. Then I ripped the fabric into strips, attached them together, and got to work.

Jason got the hook made in the morning and the rug took me about 3 days. We gave it to Sydney yesterday and she cuddled up right on it. We also gave her a bone and Jason got this picture of her this morning.

Now that this rug was such a success it makes me want to make tons more! Since rugs aren't available here I talked to some of my Guinean friends about the possibility of teaching women how to make them and they thought it was a great idea. I'll probably make a few more first and get all of the kinks worked out, but I'm pretty excited about the possibility already! First I've got to get the curtains finished in the kitchen though :-)

A Mixed Blessing

2011-02-26T16:46:00.002Z

About a week ago I started noticing that Savannah wasn't really nursing much when she got up every three or four hours in the night. I decided to see if she was really hungry, so I started just rearranging her blankets, rubbing her tummy for a minute and giving her back her paci. Sure enough that was all she needed. So for the past five nights she's been sleeping 8 to 10 hours with 2 little mini wake ups. Last night however, was different.

After a bath, some fun calm play time and some rocking, I fed her a little after nine and put her down. I heard her once for just a minute around 3ish, but she fell back to sleep quickly so I didn't even get out of bed. Around 6:30 I woke up to the sound of her happily chirping. I was elated. An entire night without my feet hitting the floor.

As I joyfully hopped out of bed to snuggle up my baby girl my feet splashed into a puddle of water... My first thought was a very unkind one directed at our dog, Sydney. Upon further inspection I discovered that the puddle covered a good amount of floor in our room and the hallway and my anger with our dog turned into curiosity. I traced the water back to it's source - our lovely washing machine! (We haven't gotten our new machine yet because it requires a 4 hour car trip and a border crossing, but I think the events of last night might've bumped it up a few notches on our priority list!)

The washing machine and I have an interesting relationship these days. I would characterize it as love/hate. Don't get me wrong, I am super grateful for it and it's saving my bacon with these cloth diapers, but it does require a little TLC. The pump motor and the temperature gauge are broken and the filling mechanism doesn't work great. So with each load I have to manually drain and fill the machine 4 times and I never really know what temperature it is going to decide to wash the clothes in. Luckily it is super tiny so washing an all red/pink load and an all blue/green load isn't really wasting any space :-)

Back to last night. I guess even though the machine was unplugged something in it decided it would be a good time to fill up with water, which it did until the water spilled onto the floor and wended it's way throughout our house. If Savannah hadn't been so wonderful I would've been up several times in the night and I probably would've noticed the water all over the floor much sooner. Isn't that the way that it always goes :-)

Savannah hanging out with a few of her Brazilian friends

Another Day, Another Strike

2011-02-13T20:07:00.004Z

I know there are some people in the world who love the snow, but I am not one of them! I love being back in the land of perpetual summer! Second only to the wonderful warmth are the piles of fresh fruits and veggies. Yesterday we had deep red tomatoes that had just been picked off of someone's vine that morning. We got a whole bag of them for 50 cents and I think we ate half of the bag for lunch :-)

We went to a birthday party this weekend for the little girl of some other missionaries here. Her dad, Jens, is from Germany and her mom, Anna, is from Ivory Coast. While we were eating my friend Anna took Savannah in the other room for a minute. When she walked back in she turned around and this is what I saw:
Savannah looked so cute peeking out and I laughed so hard!!!!!

Cooking is always a challenge the first week back. It always takes a few days to get the dishes and the cooking stuff unpacked, washed, and put away; and it takes several trips to the market to get my kitchen stocked with all of the different ingredients I need to cook from scratch. This time I thought I had a great plan – I bought peanut butter, jelly, and tuna in Dakar on our way down. The only thing that I was missing was bread. Since there are little huts that bake bread everyday on every street, my plan was to have sandwiches for a few days until I could get the house in order. Great plan right? The only problem was when we got here all of the bread bakers in the city were on strike!

The government fixes the price of a lot of different things here and bread is one of them. A loaf of french bread is 20 cents anywhere you go in the city. The problem with that is the price of flour has risen and the bread makers haven't been making any money. The bread makers decided that they had to raise the price to 30 cents. The people refused to pay 30 cents and the bread workers went on strike. I've seen the taxi drivers strike, the rice sellers strike, the postal workers strike, and the teachers strike, but I did not anticipate a bread worker strike right when we got back! After about 4 days they did get it resolved. They bread makers decided to make slightly smaller loaves and sell them for 20 cents :-)

In the Kitchen with my darling little girl in her dress from Aunt Rachel

Savannah can sleep anywhere but she especially likes her monkey bed :-)

A Lifestyle of Ministry

2010-11-10T22:37:00.004Z

Growing up my family had 6 core values – the 6 things that my parents wanted to make sure that we understood and integrated into our lives before we left the house. 1.A heart for God, 2.A lifestyle of ministry, 3.Sexual purity, 4.A strong work ethic, 5.Proper roles of men and women, and 6.A sense of humor. There are a million things you can teach your children and sometimes I think we try to teach them so many things that we end up not really teaching them anything well. My parents understood the need for focus in parenting and I'm so grateful that they took the time to weed out the unimportant.

The one that's been on my mind a lot recently is #2 - A lifestyle of ministry. This past weekend we traveled to a church in Ohio that has been supporting our ministry in Guinea-Bissau, and it was fun having Savannah grace our table with her cuteness for the first time. Having her with us while we talked about our ministry made me think about what it will look like to raise her to have a lifestyle of ministry unique to the special way that God made her.

Me and Savannah at our display table.

When we were growing up my parents were on staff with Family Life (a division of Campus Crusade for Christ) and it was cool watch them dedicate their lives to saving marriages. As much as I learned from watching them, the real lessons that I learned about having a lifestyle of ministry came from the ways that they taught me to get involved in ministry myself.

Because we're missionaries Savannah is going to grow up watching us visit churches, write newsletters, send out thank you notes, and more than all of that she will watch us dedicate our lives to loving Guineans well and spreading the good news of salvation in a tiny little country in West Africa. I'm sure she'll learn a lot about the ways God has called us to live out a lifestyle of ministry. That's a start, but I want her to learn how minister in the way that God will call her.

The lifestyle of ministry that my parents taught me (and that I want to teach Savannah) is about seeing people's needs and loving them well. I want her to know how to look at a situation and see how God has gifted her to be salt and light in that situation. I want her to know how to be a friend to someone who is friendless. I want her to bring encouragement to someone who is hopeless. I want her to take dinner to someone who is overwhelmed. I want her to know how to share the gospel through her words and through her actions so that the world will be changed.

Having a lifestyle of ministry has nothing to do with being a pastor of missionary. It's about using what God has given me in the place where He's put me to impact the world for Him. I guess I have high hopes for my baby girl. I want her to understand how to use everything she is and everything she has to glorify the Lord.

A family shot on the day that Savannah turned one month old. A lot has changed in our lives in the last month :-)

Hanging wither her pigs a few days after she was born.

One month old - isn't she precious!

The Rapidly Expanding Belly

2010-11-01T14:02:00.007Z

Somehow in the business of packing up our house in Bissau, finishing projects to prepare to come home, traveling home and then traveling all over once we got home, I didn't write a single blog the whole third trimester of being pregnant! Yikes!

To sum up the last three months of being pregnant I would use one word – long! The last month definitely felt longer than the first 8 put together! The good news is that on October 12th (a week late) our darling daughter, Savannah, finally decided to grace us with her presence. She is wonderful and adorable and we are having a great time getting to know her and learning how to take care of her.

Just for kicks, here's a little pictorial review of my third trimester :-) It's kind of amazing how much bigger I got each week – definitely noticeable!

28 weeks, our last day in Bissau

29 weeks, our first day back in the States after a week of traveling to get there. The first thing we did when we got to New Jersey was order a pizza from Papa Johns.

30 weeks at Simpson Park Camp

31 weeks, outside of Jason's parents' house

32 weeks, getting ready to get in the car and head down to Little Rock to see my family.

33 weeks, after my baby shower in Little Rock - there's quite a bit of pink on that table!

34 weeks outside of a famous Imlay City restaurant, Nachos :-)

35 weeks at Jason's grandparents' house in Caseville. Don't worry, I had Jason move the logs :-)

36 weeks, the last month begins!

37 weeks in a raspberry shirt in front of the raspberry bushes. Now that is a belly!!!

38 weeks, putting away her clothes. The onesie I'm holding says "Daddy's Little Girl"

39 weeks, yes my hand is on the door. Ready at any second darling :-)

40 weeks outside among the changing leaves.

She was born one day before the 41 week picture would have been taken :-)

Cops and Robbers

2010-07-12T11:59:00.003Z

There are lots of things that happen in the course of a normal day here that would be anything but normal in the US. Today I saw something that is a little bit strange even for Guinea-Bissau. I hopped in a taxi this morning to run a few errands downtown and as we neared the police station in our neighborhood I saw a huge crowd of people. It was sprinkling, so it seemed a little odd that they would all be standing outside getting wet. As we passed the station itself I saw about 10 police officers with rifles dressed in full riot gear. The police usually don't carry guns and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen them in their helmets and shields.

I started asking around to find out what was going on. Apparently yesterday there was a dispute between a guy selling cell phone credit and a guy who bought credit from him and said that the credit didn't work. The seller ended up calling the police and they came to the scene of the argument.

The police in Guinea-Bissau don't have too many options. The jail is only really for murders so all other crimes are usually either dealt with by someone paying them a “fine” or by someone getting beat. This time the police sided with the seller and the guy who wanted his money back ended up getting beaten. I'm not sure if he just just wanted a refund or if he had stolen money from the seller to get his money back.

The police beat the guy so severely that when he arrived home his family took him straight to the hospital but by the time they got there he had died. This morning the family marched over to the police station with the body and demanded some answers. A crowd formed rapidly, shots were fired in the air, riot gear was broken out, and more people came to see what was going on. When I passed the police station to go into town there were about 200 people in the crowd and maybe 10 officers, when I passed an hour later on the way home there were probably about 300 people in the crowd and at least 25 officers.

We've been asking people we know at the Youth Center what they think is going to happen. Since the guy who died was just a normal guy people seem to think it will pass and nothing more will come of it. Pretty sad when you think about it. No consequences other than just a tense day with a big crowd of people and having to wear extra gear in the rain.

Stuff like this just reminds me how grateful I am for the police in the US. I have never seen a police officer in Guinea-Bissau and felt safe. I've never had one speak to me except to harass me to try to get a bribe. In the US I don't even know how many times I've been helped and protected by our fine men and women in uniform.

We're leaving in two days, so I guess that's what's making me a little reminiscent :-)

I will leave you with a few pictures of my adorable, gigantic belly :-)

25 Weeks - living large :-)

26 Weeks - on the balcony in front of our house with the youth center in the background

27 Weeks - for this monumental occasion (entering the third trimester) I had a few assistants. All this week I taught a continuing education seminar for our current English, French, and Computer teachers. One day on break I had a few of them pose with me.

Week 28 will be my last pregnant picture in Bissau. After that we're headed back to the US :-) Hope to see you soon :-)

Beach Bums

2010-06-15T18:23:00.007Z

So far 2010 has been the busiest year on record for the Atkins family. When I got back from my 5 week whirlwind US adventure I returned to find a very burned out husband waiting for me. We spent about three weeks getting caught up and working with Jason's construction crew to get the shop water tight and then we hit the road for a few days at the beach.

There aren't many beaches in Guinea-Bissau, but there are several beautiful ones in Senegal, the country just north of us. So we packed a few clothes, a few snacks, and the Wii and set off with some friends of our for Cap Skirring, Senegal. Since it's a tourist town and right now is not tourist season we got an amazing deal on a two bedroom air conditioned villa and we spent a long weekend split between the pool, the beach, and several yummy restaurants specializing in delicious seafood with prices around what you would pay for a value meal at McDonalds!

The Quinn family and Atkins Family at our little villa in Cap Skirring

Since my bump is growing by leaps and bounds I had to improvise a little to come up with a swimsuit, but I think it worked out pretty well.

One of the highlights of the trip for the kids was that a stray beach dog followed us home from the beach one day became an instant pet, guarding the villa, munching up leftovers, and generally enjoying all of the attention.

When we were not enjoying the water Jason and Jonathan spent a good amount of time watching the World Cup games (that's the world-wide big soccer tournament for all of you non soccer watchers in the States). One day when he turned on the TV to watch soccer for a few minutes he was elated when game 5 of the NBA finals was on instead. We will cheer for anyone against the Lakers, so it was even cooler when the Celtics won after an amazing game.

Haha, Lakers loose!

I never really post enough pictures of Jason on my blog, so here are a few more.

Jason spent a lot of time giving Joseph (who was pretending to be a crab) rides in the pool.

Why sit on the couch when you can find a comfy spot on top of your favorite Jason shaped jungle gym?

All-in-all we had a much needed rest and for the first time in months Jason has the energy to be excited getting some serious work done. Good timing since we're leaving in about a month and we've got a lot to finish between now and then!

After an evening walk on the beach

I leave you with my latest belly pic :-)

Wii Mania!!!

2010-06-09T11:46:00.008Z

For a combination Christmas 2009 / both of our birthdays / our anniversary present Jason and I bought ourselves a Wii. I brought it back with me a few weeks ago and we’ve been having a ball. It’s a nice way to spend some time relaxing after a super busy day. So far I am awesome at Frisbe, but Jason always beats me at Ping Pong (who didn’t see that coming).

There are two other missionary families who live close to us and they both have kids, so we’ve had a few “Wii parties” and everyone has had a blast. It’s a little too much for the two 3 and half year olds, but even they enjoy sword fighting – when else can you swing something crazily around in the air and knock someone else into the water?

Since the Wii uses your whole body, people get really into it! Jason said yesterday that we’ve already gotten our money’s worth out of it just in the entertainment value of watching other people play it!

Jason demonstrating archery on the Wii. One Saturday night we set up the Wii in one of the classrooms and played on the rojector.

Abby Bowling

Jonathan and Tammy racing in canoeing at our apartment

An intense game of ping pong. I had to get the proper stance with the belly :-)

In other news our silly dog Sydney is now full grown and loving Africa. She does a bunch of crazy things and I think that Jason is really going to miss her when we’re in the States!

Lately she loves laying on her back and twisting from side to side to get our attention. What a nut!

I know you want to see more belly, and trust me there's more to see :-)

21 weeks, in front of a mango tree with Sydney hanging out in the background.

Anna, Sydney, and Joseph joined me for this one - "Tada!!!"

22 weeks, back in the baby's room. In the next month there should be a lot of cool progress :-)

23 weeks, Jason joined me for the picture because he felt the baby move for the first time this week. She moves around a lot and I feel like I'm already getting to know her a little bit.

Catching Up

2010-06-04T11:52:00.011Z

With the the crazieness of the last few weeks in the States, the rush of travel, and the mountain that awaited me when I got home, I haven't put many pictures up lately. Since some pretty fun stuff happened, I thought I would post a few :-)

Here's a shot of what my belly was looking like at 16 weeks

This is right about the time when people that I don't know started smiling at me in stores for no reason. Not quite big enough for them to ask me, but big enough for them to be suspicious

On May first my sister Rachel got married. She and Josh had a beautiful outdoor wedding in Cotter, Arkansas. The baby happened to pick that weekend to have a huge growth spurt, and it was fun to have my belly be noticeably bigger everyday for about 5 days. It also meant that I was really hungry (good timing with all of the awesome wedding food) and in general not that much help. Good thing they had 14 bridesmaids and groomsmen (all together), three flower girls and a ring bearer to pick up the slack :-) hehe

I stole a few pictures from friends :-)

The wedding party looking snazzy

Rachel and Josh

My Sibblings - Amanda, Me, Rachel, and Jordan

My Mom's Family - Cousin Tim, Uncle Dan, Aunt Sue, Dad, Olivia (flower girl), Rachel (bride), Josh (groom), Mom, Leslie, Uncle Kevin

17.5 weeks - we waited a little bit to get a picture in the bridesmaid dress. At the time my mom said that the baby was trying so hard to grow so that people would notice her at her Aunt's wedding that my mom was sure it had to be a girl :-)

Jason sent me flowers since he couldn't be at the wedding with me – stargazer lilies, one of my favorites! So I took the 18 week picture with them

Then I headed to Houston to visit my friend Kelly. She is also pregnant and we due the same week so we had fun going out to eat to celebrate our first Mother's Day together. The baby decided that the day should extra special for me so right after church I felt the first kick – how about that for timing?

After that I went back up to Michigan and spent a few days in a crazy whirlwind of packing up about 160 pounds of equipment to take back with me for the youth center. I had toner cartridges for our printers, replacement parts for wide variety of things, certificates for our computer program, a 26 pound reel of fiber optic cable, and whole assortment of other things just like that. I did manage to fit a jar of sweet pickle relish and a bag of peanut M&M's for Jason's birthday.

After that I went to the doctor, got an ultrasound and a few more tests, got the all clear to head back to Africa, took a picture to document week 19, and hit the road!

The plane ended up being craziness! One of my tickets was accidentally canceled then reinstated, then one of my flights was late, and it looked like I was either going to have to stay in Washington DC for 5 days; or fly stand by to Paris, stay in Paris for a day, then fly down to Africa (with out bags which would come by another route); or run like crazy and pray that I could change 2 concourses and make it to my flight 40 minutes before departure so that I'd be cleared to board – with a 28 minute layover... Nothing's impossible with God, right? So after considering all of my options I decided to run for it.

I've never really been much of runner and being 5 months pregnant didn't help matters. I hiked up escalators, ran on people movers, and sprinted down the straightaways. People were calling out to me to slow down, but I kept on going. I arrived at my gate, pregnant and panting, 5 minutes before the plane was supposed to take off. I'm pretty sure the gate attendants felt sorry for me because even though the doors were locked and the pilot was turning up the engines to pull away from the gate, they radioed the plane, franticly scanned in my info, reopened the flight for boarding, and got me onboard moments before take off.

Sadly, my bags were not as speedy as I was, and while the flights to Dakar were booked full of people for the next 5 days, they did manage to find room for my luggage – no small feat! So the next day I got my bags on got on the overnight boat to the south of Senegal to finally see Jason again.

I slept like a log on the boat and arrived safe and sound with all of my bags to the biggest hug of all time! Then Jason and I crashed in a little hotel that has AC went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. We got up the next day and set out for Guinea-Bissau.

This is my 20 week picture. It's not a great belly shot, but the baby and I were really happy to see Jase again!

It was so fun to come back home to Bissau and I have loved everyone's comments on my belly as it has been growing more and more noticeable! Usually when I see people I don't know here the first thing they say to me is “you're white”, but now the first thing they say is “wow, look how beautiful you are!” with a special gleam in their eyes as they rub my belly. Not a bad change. I should've gotten pregnant a long time ago!!! :-) lol!

About a week after I got back we celebrated Jason's birthday with a stellar apple pie! I didn't have any birthday candles, but we made due :-)

Speaking of pie, it's getting to be about that time, so I'm going to get some food ready – this pregnant lady's gotta eat!!! I'll post some more in a few days :-)

pregnancy induced delusional thinking

2010-04-18T11:06:00.003Z

After much traveling I made it to the States safe and sound with all of my luggage and most of my sanity :-) I've been having a great time with Jason's family and the baby had it's first doctor's appointment last week. It looks like everything is going well and I'll know more in a few days when I get all of the results back.

Jason's been super busy in Guinea-Bissau and the shop at the youth center is starting to resemble a castle! They've got the walls for the first story finished, they've poured the floor for the second story, and the walls of the second story are going up! Now all they have to do is finish the walls, cover them with plaster and get them painted, and install a roof before the rainy season starts – did I mention that's around May 15th!!!!

I found this cartoon on a baby website the other day and I laughed really hard! I thought I would share it with you!

The bump is finally making an appearance noticeable to people who are not me. Here are my two most recent pics

This was my last one in Africa for a while so I thought I would wear a very bright African dress :-)

At the Atkins house. This is actually 2 weeks after the last one, but I missed a week because of traveling and then the doctor moved my due date when I saw him last week, so it worked out.

Right before I left the English department at the Youth Center had a talent show. It was pretty creative and fairly hilarious! Here are the adorable judges:

Anna, Emily, and Katie

The bump has arrived

2010-03-25T11:20:00.006Z

Jason and I have been running around like crazy getting ready for me to head to the States for my sister Rachel's wedding and I realized today that I haven't posted any pictures of my belly lately! There is actually a visible little bump now and I'm quite proud of it!!!

This was taken a few days before the bump became apparent. At this point I was having tons of hip pain and not walking around well.

Then about a day before I hit 11 weeks I woke up one morning and Jason looked at me and said, "Hey, I think I can see the baby!" I ran to the mirror and discovered that he was right!!! Then I noticed that I had just run to the mirror - no hip pain. I don't know why the baby decided to wiggle around and make his/her appearance, but I was happy about it!!! My hip has been fine since then!

At 12 weeks I went in for my second ultrasound. I hadn't gained any weight yet and even though the bump was sprouting a little I was getting nervous about the baby - first time mom jitters I guess. We took the 12 week picture in front of the little house where the doctor does ultrasounds before I went in. I don't look very nervous in the picture, but I was. We had to wait for hours and by that point I was getting pretty anxious. The good news is that we got to see the baby and he/she is doing great!

If you are experienced at checking out ultrasounds you will see the baby right away. In case you don't, look in the mostly black circle near the top (just a little bit farther up than the really bright spot - my full bladder). In that circle the baby is laying at the bottom. From left to right you can see his/her giant round head, then the little round body, then you can barely see the tiny legs kicking around - he/she is about 2 inches head to rump in this picture.

We got to see the baby waving and rolling over. It was so cute and it made the baby seem so much more real. I loved it!!! We also heard the heart beat. Since the baby was rolling around the heart was beating pretty fast - 149 beats per minute.

Right now I'm 13 weeks and we took this picture this morning outside on our little veranda. It's hard to see the belly in this one, but trust me it's there. I'm still wearing all of my normal clothes at this point and I am confident that I will fit into the bridesmaid dress for Rachel's wedding May 1st, but soon after that I think I will have to bust out some maternity clothes :-) Good thing I'll be in the States for a little bit to pick up some cute ones :-)

About two weeks ago all 6 of the pregnant missionaries in Guinea-Bissau got together for a party. We ate SO much food and were waited on all day by our proud husbands. At the end of the party we took a picture lining up by the age of the baby.

The pregnant missionary women. Left to right:
Tanya, 5 months, first baby, twins, from Norway
Suerda, 4 months, second baby, from Brazil
Fabiana, 4 months, first baby, from Brazil
Me, 3 months, first baby, from the US
Nete, 3 months, first baby, from Brazil
Rosania, 2 months, third baby, from Brazil

So, that's the latest little Atkins info :-) I'm really looking forward to coming home for Rachel's wedding, seeing lots of family and friends, and eating lots of yummy food (for the baby). I'm not looking forward to being separated from Jason for 5 weeks, but we will be back together soon. Thank you so much for all of your prayers for us and our little guy/girl :-)

serious thoughts about women in Guinea-Bissau

2010-03-13T08:54:00.006Z

Monday was international women’s day and since there is never a reason too small to take a holiday in Guinea-Bissau, everything shut down :-) Supposedly the men go to the market and cook for their wives while the women chill all day, but I don’t know anyone who actually did that.

Serving up yummy Guinean food for a large group

Because Monday was a holiday, I had a little extra time to catch up on some reading on the internet. I did a little searching for news about Guinea-Bissau and I started noticing that lately our country has been appearing on lots of different lists. One of the 10 poorest countries in the world, right near the top on the list of the most corrupt governments, infant mortality through the roof, 1 in 13 women die in childbirth or pregnancy related causes, AIDS is on the rise and the literacy rate is terrible, and it’s ranked by the World Bank as the worst country to invest your money in a new business in 2010 because of instability, corruption, and lack of infrastructure.

Just before telling her that she had lost the baby. This happens at least 10 times more often than actually delivering a baby out in the village.

Bearing all that in mind, a new list came out this week in honor of international women’s day that shouldn’t have taken me by surprise, but it did - the 10 worst countries in the world to be a woman. I bet you can’t guess one of those 10... yup... Guinea-Bissau. Female literacy is low, spousal abuse is high, and we’re one of the only countries in the world where female genital mutilation is on the rise. When you focus on the stats, the picture is bleak for the women of this country.

I know a lot of women here. Some of them are just like the statistics would lead you to believe, uneducated, beaten, and without hope. I’ve been in a village during a mutilation ceremony and felt oppression so thick I could hardly breathe. I’ve looked into the eyes of woman dying from AIDS because her husband takes medicine himself but doesn’t think his wives are worth enough to treat. I’ve talked to women, covered in bruises, blaming themselves for their latest beating. Some days the heartbreak is overwhelming.

But I also know others. Over the past year, through Ajuda Bajuda and my women’s Bible study at church, I’ve gotten close to so many strong Christian women. The message of Jesus Christ has changed their lives in so many ways! The church in Guinea-Bissau is building schools, digging wells, and training families how to love one another. Christian husbands are sending their daughters to school, staying faithful to their wives, and arguing using words instead of fists.

It just brings me back to the cry of my heart – Guinea-Bissau needs Jesus. Desperate people need Hope, battered people need a Fortress, lost people need a Savior. Satan’s got this country so wrapped up and he’s ruining lives left and right! Join me in praying for this beautiful country – that it would change because God changes the hearts and minds of its people; that people would find the peace, hope, and the reason for living that they’re searching for in the life changing message of Jesus Christ.

A group of Christian women from the islands worshiping God as they watch the waves.

Construction and Cooking

2010-03-02T11:18:00.015Z

The rainy season is drawing nearer everyday which means that Jason’s been busy. Actually, is there are word that means more than busy, like 6 times busy – if there is, that’s Jason. In the dry season it never rains, but once the rain comes it will rain everyday for months. Good for crops, good for wells, good for keeping the dust down, not so good for building with compressed earth blocks.

Nilton and Jason making some blocks in the youth center

The blocks that come out of the block machine are super strong, durable, and all-around awesome, but just like super man, they have their kryptonite – water. The blocks can’t get wet. You get around this by covering the buildings that you make with plaster and paint. The only problem is that the walls need to be done before they can be covered. Right now the block machine has two major projects: the new machine shop at the Youth Center in Bissau, and several buildings at the new Center that Wade and Katie are building in Mansoa (a nearby village).

God has been blessing the construction projects and despite seeming hundreds of setbacks and delays (welcome to construction in the third world, or actually just about anywhere…) the buildings are going up. The foundations are in and the walls are climbing skyward. In the next two months we just have to finish the walls, run all of the electrical and plumbing, build and install tons of windows and doors, install roofs, and generally batten down all of the hatches for the rain. It sounds doable, right? If only because we know that with God all things are possible :-)

Jason and his crew taking the block machine and all of it's accessories out to Mansoa

A pile of blocks fresh from the machine in Mansoa

Now that Jason’s got a great group of guys trained on the actual running of the block maker, he’s been spending most of his time, measuring, and cutting, and welding, and assembling, and chopping, and a variety of other man-type tasks. I’ve been trying to capture various pictures of him at work, so her are a few of the latest.

Jason using the arch form that he designed and built to make a pretty doorway on the new mini-clinic at the youth center. It's used to clean and bandage up small wounds of the kids in our neighborhood.

Showing Abby how the plasma cutter slices through steel like butter

Jason's looking forward to the shop being completed so that he can work on a table instead of on the ground!

Jason and Nilton welding up the water tower for Wade and Katie's house in Mansoa

As for me I’ve been doing pretty well. I’ve got work up to my eyeballs with Ajuda Bajuda and the women’s group at church, but it’s good to be needed, right? God has been continuing to bless my language and I’m not getting tired as fast listening to Creole as I used to. I can go for several hours at a time now without needing a break! God’s been bringing many friends around to our neck of the woods and there haven’t been very many days in the last two months where Jason and I have eaten with just the two of us at the table. It’s a blessing to be able to have people share our food and our home with and I’m quickly gaining a reputation as an amazing cook. Not sure if the praise is totally deserved, but I do try :-)

We were missing Tim Horton's so we fried up some cinnamon and sugar donut holes and make some good coffee.

Nicole munching on a turkey leg - soooooo gooooood!

There's a great squash here, bobra, that tastes just like pumpkin. It's in season so I've been making all kinds of things with it - principally, pumpkin muffins.

I had a serious fast food craving so I cooked hot dogs over the flame of our gas stove while our friend Anna (from Germany) made some french fries.

As far as the baby goes, I’ve been thanking God everyday for how not sick I’ve been. I’ve been dealing with a fair amount of tiredness and my nose can pick up smells a mile away, but besides that all of the other changes have been pretty minor. I haven’t posted any pictures of myself lately. There’s not a lot to see yet, but I know you guys are curious, so I’ll post the last few week updates anyway :-)

Standing in the baby's room in front of the wall that leads to our room. Once we get all of the doors and windows in the baby's room we will break a hole in the wall where the window is and put a door there.

Sydney and I hanging out in front of the baby's room. Sydney is laying in what will be the new doorway to our house.

The most exciting thing that happened over the past few weeks is that we found a doctor who has an ultrasound machine and training on how to use it. We went there about two weeks ago to see how the baby's doing. As you can see from the picture below, you can't really see much yet. The circle is the baby's sac and the white line inside it is the actual baby. The cool part about the visit was that we got to hear the baby's heart beat. It made it feel so real.

Just for fun I thought you might like to see a few more pictures of my hair when it was braided, and then after it was unbraided…

Sewing with the curls

All of the fake hair that I took out and the 80's style that remained

Baby Atkins!!!!!

2010-02-12T10:53:00.008Z

About two weeks ago we found out that I am pregnant. We wanted to get pregnant this year and God chose January :-) We couldn’t be happier, in fact I think that my cheeks are getting sore from smiling so much! I’m not that good at keeping exciting secrets so the past two weeks have been a mild form of torture! Last night Jason looked at me and with a big grin on his face said, “Why don’t you go ahead and put it on facebook. We’re going to tell everyone sooner or later, so it might as well be now.” That was all the motivation I needed! I posted a status announcing our little guy and within 12 hours 45 people commented on my status to say congratulations. So far Baby Atkins is WAY more popular than my normal status updates :-)

The apartment that we live in now is the second story of a house. We have a bathroom, a kitchen, and then one other room that we use as our bedroom / office / living room. Jason and I both do a lot of our work from the apartment so we have people over working with us a lot. There is a large veranda on the front of the second story and half of it already had a roof with columns at the corners. We decided a while ago that we wanted to wall it in to have an extra room in the house and we started the project about a week before we found out that we were expecting. So now the extra room is officially the baby's room. It's really going to be a blessing because the baby will be able to sleep much better without people coming in and out of it's sleeping area all day!

We have been taking pictures of my belly each in week in the baby's room so you can see the baby's progress and the room's progress. So far, not much to report with the belly, but the room is coming along great!

Six Weeks and a pile of blocks

Seven Weeks and some of the blocks are now walls

Last week one of the import stores downtown got frozen turkeys! We were so amazed that we bought one. We've been in a celebrate-y mood lately, so we had a party and invited two other American families who live in Bissau. The turkey was amazing, and we all had a good time :-)

One wing fell off when we were taking it out of the pan, but besides that it looks good enough to eat :-)

Abby, munching on a drumstick

Tammy and Katie getting food for the kids, Jonathan and Jason lounging in the background :-)

One of the words here for the time of pregnancy is the same word for "hope" (like "expecting" in English), and it's also what they call the dresses that married women wear - because if you're married you should be pregnant :-) As a married women I do wear these dresses a lot but last Sunday was my first time to be wearing a "maternity dress" while I was actually pregnant, so we took a picture :-)

Curly Hair

2010-02-05T17:48:00.004Z

A lot of times when people ask me how life’s different over here I don’t really know what to say. It’s different in so many ways – where to begin?!? The other day as Jason went up on our roof to do something that might seem a bit strange I thought to myself, yup, this is one of those differences...

In the US water is pumped up into giant water towers and then the pressure from those towers gives you running water in your house. Here we don’t have big water towers that bring us running water, but we use that basic idea on a smaller scale. When the youth center’s generator is on for classes we pump water from our well up into a tank on the top of our house. Then, even when we don’t have power, the pressure coming from the tank gives us running water.

About once a year the tank needs to be cleaned out. All kinds of algae and other fun stuff grow in it, and it’s just a little disconcerting to shower in green water... hehe. Our water tank is pretty new but when it was installed they put cement blocks inside of it to hold it down and they did not put a lid on it. So, a few weeks ago when Jason went up to check it he discovered that the cement blocks were dissolving into the water and that somewhere along the line some cardboard and some plastic bags had gotten in the tank (presumably from the lack of lid) and were decaying also. That was enough for him, so he donned his grubby clothes, grabbed a filter, a scrubber, and some bleach, and slithered into the small opening in the top of our 1,000 liter tank.

He scrubbed and flushed and scrubbed some more and I’m happy to report that he did make it back out of our tank, our water is much cleaner, and we do now have a lid!

I'm not quite sure what Jason was going for in this one - big intimidating water tank dirt eliminator, maybe?

Over Christmas I got my hair braided with curly extensions and we went out the village to visit our Brazilian friends there, Gilson and Rosania.

Decorating the dead Christmas tree - it's amazing what you can do with garlands and bows, when we were finished it actually looked pretty good!

I couldn't get my hair wet, so I decided, who needs a shower cap, I'll just go with the dress that I wore earlier :-)

Jason and I on Christmas day

Christmas just isn't Christmas without a one-year-old to play in the wrapping paper :-)

A few days after Christmas they wanted me to make American food, so I made mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and Swiss steak. It was good!!! (Yes, I am wearing the same clothes as Christmas, we don't take that many outfits when we travel on public transport...)

In another little bit of news there is a bakery in Bissau that makes whole wheat and nine grain bread! It’s been open for less than a month, but so far so good. Before this you could really only buy two kinds of bread in Bissau - a long Italian loaf or a sweet roll. We’ve been frequent visitors to the new store and we’re hoping that it stays open for a while!

Slicing into a loaf of nine grain bread!

Crazy Christmas Carnival pictures

2010-01-26T12:17:00.004Z

This year about a week before Christmas Jason and I hosted a "Crazy Christmas Carnival". The Wilson family came down from Dakar so we had them and the McHargues over, divided into teams (boys verses girls), and the fun began.

The girls team, Eden and Abby, chose the name "The Adventurers", the boys team, Caleb, Eleazar, and Josiah, chose the name "Shocking Lightning" We bowled using water bottles and coconuts, we had a mini talent show, we used pool noodles as javelins, we guessed the weight of objects, and we even had a romper-stomper race. At the end of the night we kicked back with some mac and cheese and watched Ice Age.

Here are some pictures of the action:

Jason fashining the romper-stompers out of empty powdered milk cans

The romper-stomper race!

The javelin throw

Hitting those targets wasn't easy!

Bowling - After the coconut cracked we switched to a tennis ball. It was a lot harder!

The mac and cheese that finished it all off. This was the "zany" pose :-)

In the end the boys won, but not by much!!!

Ankol

2010-01-10T21:51:00.002Z

The other day Jason and I were driving back from a village about 2 hours out of Bissau and we saw branches full of fruit for sale. I thought they were coconuts at first, so we stopped to check them out. It turned out that they were not coconuts, but they were a related fruit called “ankol”. The entire branch was only $2, and the people selling it assured us that it was quite good, so I thought, why not? We threw the branch in the back of the truck and got back on the road.

When we got home I asked some people at the youth center about “ankol”. They all said that they liked it but they hadn’t had any in forever since you can only get it in the interior. Their memories of its yummyness made me curious so I decided to test out our new mystery fruit. I picked up the branch and the first thing I noticed was that it was heavy! Like ridiculously heavy. This picture is not an exaggeration!

The second thing that I noticed was that it was really hard to get off of the branch. I had to twist, yank, and basically use all of the strength and cunning that I possess for each one.

Sydney is not amused

Sydney was much more interested in chewing
on the new stick than in the fruit itself

Finally I had one and I took it inside to check it out. I cut into it and was immediately puzzled. Most of the inside was a dense, spongy sort of material, but there were three sacks each about the size of a golf ball filled with clear jelly. I tried the spongy stuff first, but it was so bitter it made my toes curl, so I decided that the edible stuff must be the gooey part. I grabbed a spoon and stuck it in. I was prepared for the worst, but I was surprised, and then even more confused. It tasted like... well... nothing. It didn’t really taste like anything at all.

I went back outside and asked my friends how they usually eat “ankol” and they said they cut the top off, take a spoon, and dig out the jelly goodness. They asked me if I liked it and I said that I didn’t not like it. They all laughed.

Jason came home and came to the same conclusion, so then we were left with about 40 “ankol” that we didn’t really want to eat. I decided to load a bag (several times because I couldn’t carry all of them at once) and give them away to our neighbors. As I visited different neighbors and took out the “ankols” they were all so excited. Some of them hadn’t had one in 20 years and most of the kids had never tried one. Before I knew it I was hearing all kinds of stories of people’s childhood memories, it was a great time.

Then the weirdest thing happened – people started giving me stuff. Someone gave me a handful of lemons, someone else gave me a little bunch of bananas, and one of our neighbors gave me a bag of freshly harvested peanuts. Here in Bissau people ask us for stuff all the time. Everyday, especially if I leave my house, people ask me for things – money, food, you name it, even the clothes that I am currently wearing. A lot of the time we do help people, so we are very familiar with giving stuff away. The difference with this was I got the opportunity to give something away that I wasn’t asked for (kind of like a preemptive strike) and people gave me things back. It was strange and kind of nice.

Sydney's Adventrues

2010-01-08T11:25:00.008Z

Most mornings our puppy Sydney leaves our house with Jason and makes a trip to the bread hut. It’s little building with woven reed sides and a metal roof where they bake bread daily at the crack of dawn. The only things inside are the table that they mix the dough on and a huge clay oven where they cook the bread.

A month or so ago Jason and Sydney set out to pick up the morning bread and they ran into three big dogs. Sydney has met these dogs before and usually she just rolls on the ground in front of them and they all play a little bit. For some reason that day these dogs were mad. When Sydney came around the corner they jumped her. They were barking, biting, and going crazy. As soon as Jason realized what was going on he chased the dogs away, scooped her up in his arms and brought her home. He checked her for wounds, just a few scratches, and sat with her and snuggled her until she calmed down and got comfortable again.

The next day when Jason took Sydney to the bread hut with him the dogs were there again. Sydney didn’t run for Jason - who was right there, ready to protect her - she took off with those dogs at her heals. She didn’t remember Jason saving her or carrying her home or sitting with her and petting her, she just remembered those three big dogs.

The day after that Sydney did not want to leave the Youth Center where we live. She cowered and cringed and finally Jason had to put her on a leash. He had a wary eye and a hand full of rocks, but Sydney didn’t see that. She just remembered those three big dogs. Jason dragged her all the way to the bread hut and home.

Jason ended up doing that everyday for two weeks, and each day Sydney was scared and timid. Once the other dogs saw that Sydney was with Jason and not just running free they completely left her alone. After those two weeks Sydney finally realized that with Jase with her those dogs were actually scared of her! After that she didn’t need a leash anymore, she loved going with Jason and she still does. Now, when she sees other dogs, she doesn’t cower on the ground, and she also doesn’t run away; she just keeps walking with Jason.

The other day a stray dog came into the Youth Center and started chasing and biting some doves that are pets of our director. Sydney tore after that dog barking like crazy and that dog took off! She chased that dog all the way down the street and then proudly trotted back home. After I saw that I was thinking about how timid she used to be and how much of a contrast there is now and it struck me how alike Sydney and I are.

Just like Sydney, sometimes I wander a little bit from God’s side and sometimes a pack of dogs comes out of nowhere and blindsides me. Sometimes I don’t understand why God let me be attacked. But what I really don’t understand is when God puts on a leash and leads me back to that place again and again and again.

Sometimes it’s an abrasive person that just rubs me the wrong way. I pray for love and patience, but God seems to bring that person back into my life over and over and over, completely draining all of the love and patience that I asked for :-) There are lots of other ways where I can feel like I’m in the same difficult or hurtful situation over and over and it just doesn’t make sense. When I was thinking about Jason and Sydney it made me realize that sometimes God brings me into those situations on purpose so that I can be assured of His presence and His provision no matter what the circumstances. He’s always working to change me because He has a purpose for my life.

Jason and I can’t really have a timid guard dog, so we helped her get her confidence back. God can’t really have an impatient, scared, easily annoyed, shallow, selfish Christian, so He helps me become more like Him. He doesn’t bring me into those situations over and over again to drive me crazy, He does it to change me, and when it comes right down to it I’m so grateful for all of the changes He’s worked in my life over the years!

"Bring it on!"

Praising God

2009-10-19T09:52:00.001Z

One of the guys on staff here at the Youth Center, Tolentino, came down with Yellow Fever about two weeks ago. It’s a pretty serious disease and when he was younger his older brother died from it. Yellow Fever, true to its name, turns your body yellow and gives you a super high fever, among other things. Tolentino’s fever was so high that for days he wrapped himself in a cloth and every 5 to 15 minutes poured a bucket of water over himself just to keep cool.

On Thursday he was sitting in front of his house with all of the people who had come to see him. They were all talking about how bad he looked and how serious the disease was. Tolentino listened until he couldn’t take it anymore. He asked everyone to leave him alone for half an hour. He went inside the house, shut the door and started singing praise to God. Tolentino has a big voice, so when he sings, you hear it. Everyone outside starting telling Tolentino’s family that the disease had affected his brain. After singing for about 10 minutes he started praying. He prayed for the rest of them time and then the fever left him. He stood up, went outside, and started eating for the first time in days.

Since then he’s been gaining strength. He was in staff meeting this morning giving praise to God for healing him. He said that as he was sitting there listening to everyone and thinking about how sick he was he remembered that God knows the number of our days. He could choose whether he was going to sit there and feel terrible before he died or if he was going to sing praise to God. He chose to praise God with everything he had left and leave it in His hands.

After hearing that testimony this morning I just had to share it with you. I don’t always choose to use the time that I have to worship God. When I’m faced with difficult situations many times I focus on the situations instead of taking time to push everything else aside and focus on God. I think it’s in those moments that true worship happens. When we say to God, I don’t know if I’m ever going to make it through this, but I know that my purpose here it to worship You, so I’m going to give you what I’ve got.

Parking triumph

2009-10-17T20:23:00.005Z

The other day I parallel parked for the first time. I was with Katie going to the market to buy some baby clothes for a friend of ours (Jason was with us too, but he was headed to a different section to pick up some bike parts).

I know the picture makes it look like the car behind me was really far behind me, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere. I pulled up and then turned the wheels to get really close when I backed up and then straightened it out, not bad for a first-timer :-) hehe

This is Katie and I headed in.

Exciting News!!!!!!!!!!

2009-10-15T10:13:00.000Z

One of the coolest things about being a Christian is seeing someone come to Christ! As a missionary I get to see it and hear about it often. I love it. There is nothing more exciting than celebrating along with the angels when someone lays down all of their own efforts and runs to Christ to save and be the Lord of their life!

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but about a month or so ago I was put in charge of our morning staff meetings at the Youth Center. We sing for about 10-15 minutes, have a time of prayer and then I give a little 5 minute devotion. It’s been really good for my Creole. Enough so that I have to prepare but not so much that it feels overwhelming. Apparently I’m a fairly entertaining speaker because more and more students have been coming each day to sit outside of our circle and listen to what I have to say. The past two weeks we’ve been talking about the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-17) – why we need it, what it is, what it symbolizes, how to use it, etc. I’ve really been enjoying it and I’ve been getting a lot of “amens” which always makes any teacher happy :-) hehe

Last week after I shared Pastor Ze Agusto (the director of YFC Bissau) felt compelled to say that he knows that a lot of people around the circle are not Christians or are baby Christians and if they ever want to know more about anything that we talk about there are lots of people at the Youth Center who would love to take time to talk to about it. He asked three guys who are in the seminary here to stand up and said that any of them would love to chat about God anytime.

Right after that one of our students, Sabino, who had been coming to listen approached one of those guys. He said that as I was sharing about the armor of God everyday he was starting to really understand that Jesus is powerful. He realized that he needed Jesus in his life and he wanted to become a Christian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He had wanted to talk to me but he’s terrified of white people so he’d been hanging back (a lot of the tribes around here discipline their children by telling them that if they’re not good a white person will come and kill them – nice huh?). When pastor said that other people would love to share more too, that was exactly the invitation he’s been looking for.

Moses shared with him about what becoming a Christian means and Sabino said he was ready he prayed with Moses and Moses asked him to go and tell his family and then to come back the next day for discipleship if he was really serious. When he came back the next day he wanted to know if Jesus is more powerful than the witch doctors. When Moses asked why Sabino showed him an idol that he was wearing around his waist. Sabino said that his brother had lots of money so he went to the witch doctor a while ago and had him do a special thing to this idol so that his brother would favor him and give him money. Moses explained to him that yes, Jesus is more powerful, but the real heart of the problem is that money that you gain deceitfully will never satisfy. This opened the door to talk about the way a Christian lives and by the end Sabino decided on his own that the idol was worthless and he threw it away.

Please pray with me for Sabino that God would continue to open his eyes and that he would continue to be open to change his life to glorify God. Isn’t God amazing?!?!?!

Cooking with Emily :-)

2009-09-30T19:05:00.002Z

Jase and I made this video a few months ago, but I forgot about it. It's part two because we did a part one about taking the heads off of shrimp that we bought on the street here - it didn't really turn out that great because people were talking loudly in the background, but this one is much better. It's meant to be a little silly, so feel free to laugh :-) hehe

Ponderings from the Tub

2009-09-29T17:10:00.001Z

The past two weeks have been HOT! Today it’s 114 degrees on our roof and inside our house it’s been hovering around 90... Unfortunately my body picked right now to have an allergic reaction to something so my skin is going crazy - itchy, swollen, red, yuck! I’ve been fanning and taking lots of showers, but today I decided to try an ice bath (at the suggestion of my brilliant husband). I filled the tub with cold water and added as much ice as our freezer has been able to make today (it’s hard work freezing something when it’s this hot). It was great.

I’ve been reading the gospel of Luke a lot lately and as I was chilling in the tub my mind was wandering around in some of Jesus’ parables. The parable of the talents is a familiar story – a master leaves for a trip giving three servants different amounts of money; two work hard and double the money while he is away, but the third (who was given the least) gets scared and does nothing with it. When the master gets back he’s pretty put out with the third servant for not even trying to use what he was given.

When that story came to mind I asked God if this had been a pattern in my life lately. Have there been opportunities / skills / stuff, that I’ve been to scared to use. One word came to my mind – language. I didn't understand where God was going with that one at first, so I kept praying. The first two times we were over here I didn’t really do much in Portuguese Creole. I was teaching English and teaching English teachers, and, let’s face it, I don’t really like to do things I’m not good at (anybody with me???). When we decided to come back as full-time missionaries for four years I knew I had to get serious. I took my Creole Bible and my Creole-English dictionary back to the States and during the year that we were fundraising and training I was studying.

This time back I’ve been working hard at Creole – memorizing scripture, leading a morning staff meeting everyday, doing discipleship and business training with Guinean women – and it’s been good for me. I’ve gotten to know people more, understand them better, and I’ve had lots of new opportunities for ministry. But, the best part is that every time I try something new my Creole has been getting better and better.

As I was thinking about all of this I asked God where I fit in the story. I felt an assurance that right now I’m using what He’s given me and He’s blessing it. I also felt a sense of loss for the first two 8 month blocks we spent here. Sure my knowledge of the language was a lot less then, but what if I had used the small amount of language that I had instead of waiting to get more before I jumped in? Right now I’m being faithful with the “two talents” of language that I have, but what if I had been faithful with the “one talent” that I had before?

One amazing thing about our God is that He’s a God of second chances. Just because you messed up before doesn’t mean you can’t jump in now. What do you have that you’re not using because it’s not all that you would want it to be?

An Interesting Friday

2009-07-24T15:01:00.003Z

Lots of days missionary life is not super exciting. I clean the house, cook food, go shopping, teach classes – fairly normal stuff. It does have some different wrinkles, being in a different language, in a strange place, but the things themselves are not extraordinary. But, every once in a while, I have a day that reminds me that I’m a missionary. Friday was one of those days.

Friday morning started with a princess beading party. Wade and Katie’s daughter Abby had her 10th birthday and for her party she wanted me to make necklaces with her and her friend Anna. So on Friday morning I was in my kitchen with beads spread all over the table teaching two little princesses how to make lovely necklaces and bracelets to accent their royalty. We were having a good time when I looked up and there was a woman with four little kids and two bowls standing in front of me.

I knew that she had probably come to ask me for something because she was holding out empty bowls, but she was using a word that I didn’t know so it took me a little bit to find out what she wanted. She was from the islands and she was going to return there the next day and she wanted me to give her some food for her children.

It’s really normal in Guinea-Bissau for people that we know to ask us for help when they need something and almost every time we do help them; however, it’s not really that normal for a Guinean to come into the house of someone they don’t know and ask for help, so I was totally thrown off. Sometimes people come to the Youth Center for help and then when they see me they ask me, but since our house in the back of the Youth Center people never really come into the house to ask for things. Every month we give money to the Youth Center’s giving fund and then when people come that we don’t know we refer them to the guy at the Center who’s in charge of that fund. That helps us a lot because they know way better than we do if someone is trying to scam us and they also know how much help is appropriate.

For some reason in this case I was caught really off guard. I asked her to wait and came upstairs to talk to Jason. As soon as I walked in the door tears welled up in my eyes. I was really feeling the weight of this woman’s problem and I couldn’t figure out why it was so heavy and overwhelming on my heart. Jason talked to me for a bit then I went back downstairs talked to her a little more and then took her to William. As William started talking to her I left because a friend of mine stopped by to talk to me. The cool part of this story is that when William was talking to her he felt like he should share Jesus with her. He did and she accepted right away. He made it really clear that we were going to help her out and that accepting Jesus didn’t have anything to do with her getting money for food from us, but she told him that for a long time she had had questions about her life and no one had ever told her the story of Jesus before. She wanted to become a Christian because when he was explaining it, it all made sense.

Wow. When William came back and told me that I was amazed! Then all my feeling of uncertainty and the weight of this woman’s problem made sense. Satan knows when someone is in the right place at the right time and the last thing that he wanted was for someone to share Jesus with that woman. When I realized that, I was so convicted. I’m the missionary, right? Shouldn’t I always been on the lookout for people that need to hear about Jesus??? I’m so glad that William decided to share with her, but if he hadn’t she would have spoken to two Christians and walked away with her heart still searching for answers! I prayed right then that God wouldn’t let me miss another opportunity.

Don’t you love it when God answers your prayers right away? Well, that’s what happened to me…

Right after that Katie and I went to the market to buy some black lining material for some bags a friend of mine is working on. While I was in the little shop buying the material a Muslim man sitting outside turned and asked me if I was buying it to make myself a burka. Obviously the man could take one look at me with my uncovered head and tell that I am not a Muslim, so he was just trying to provoke me. I thought about what he said for a minute and then I was reminded of my earlier prayer.

So, I took a deep breath, got myself mentally ready for a good amount of Creole, and answered him – no, I wasn’t going to make a burka, I was going to make some purses - and as long as we are on the topic why do Muslims put such a weight on their wives to have no identity and be so hidden away from the world? Well, that sparked a conversation about Islam in general and I was able to explain to him that the way I see it Islam is a very heavy religion for its followers. They live everyday of their lives with the uncertainty of never knowing what’s going to happen to them after they die. When they die they believe that all of the good that they’ve done is added up and weighed against all of the non-good and that decides their future. I told him that I only know of one person in history who could pass that test, Jesus.

We talked about that for a while and he agreed with me that it is a very heavy thing. Then I explained to him that the reason that I’m a Christian is because God knows that no one is good enough to get to heaven on their own, so He sent Jesus Christ to come and die for my sins. When I accepted Jesus as my savior He came into my life and cleaned away all of that sin and He continues to do that everyday as I walk with Him, so the life of a Christian is a life of freedom and relationship.

He said that Jesus was a great prophet and that he believes every word that Jesus said even though he hasn’t read the Bible yet. I told him that he cannot believe every word that Jesus said and be a Muslim because Jesus said that He is the only way, the only truth, and the only life. We talked for about 15 minutes and in the end he told me that if someone brings him a Bible he will read every word of it because he wants to know more about Jesus!

As Katie and I walked away from that conversation we were both amazed. It’s not very often that a Muslim man will listen to the words of a woman, let alone a Christian woman! It was just so obvious that God was at work in the situation. His name is Zakarias (Zachariah in English) and I would appreciate your prayers as I go back and take him a Bible.

All that to say, my eyes are peeled. I’m ready. I’m pumped. And, I can’t wait to see what God is going to say through me to the next person :-)

New Veggies!

2009-07-13T18:50:00.003Z

This past month and a half has flown by!!!! It's been fun, stressful, strange, familiar, and good. We really are so blessed to be here with this opportunity to really make a difference!

A lot of things have changed in Bissau since last time! One very exciting change is that there's a new store!!!! They call it a super market, but it's just a little room with some shelves and refrigerators. The thing that's exciting about it is that on the last day of each month they get a shipment of vegetables. You may ask why I'm so pumped about veggies, but wait, you don't know what kinds.... This month they got red peppers and (drum roll please) frozen broccoli! That's right I found broccoli in Bissau! You have no idea how excited I was. I bought a whole kilo!

That's not all! After I left that new little store I went to another little store that gets cheese sometimes and they had cheddar cheese. There are no words in the English language to convey my shock. I seriously almost passed out with joy!!!!! It was only like double the price of not-on-sale cheddar in America so I snapped up the three little squares that were there. Then I found the manager and told her that as long as they kept ordering cheddar I would keep buying it. I actually told her several times because I was just gushing. I think she got the point :-) The thing is here just because a store has something once that doesn't mean they will ever have it again!

So with the broccoli and cheddar powers combined I was in heaven for dinner that night. I had Jason take a picture so you could share in my joy :-)

Before Eden and her family moved to Dakar we had a Kool-Aid party. Like a tea party - little cookies, little crackers, little tea cups, but with Kool-Aid which is much better in Africa than hot tea :-)

Me, Eden, Abby, and Anna

When we first got here I got a bad rash from the heat and the mango trees so after lunch I would take a shower, get a pack of ice, and sit in front of the fan with the ice on my rash. It was my own little homemade air conditioning. I liked it so much I thought that Sydney might like it too, so one day I got out the ice pack and cooled her down. She liked it :-)

Sydney in the "AC"

Sydney is actually doing really well here. She doesn't really seem to mind the heat - she's hardly ever panting and she's full of energy.

So, that's the latest from around here :-)

a few thoughts about a bad day

2009-07-06T11:13:00.001Z

You know how some days you just have “one of those days”? That was yesterday. I woke up feeling totally off, and it seemed like everything that happened was more frustrating that the last thing. I ended the day thoroughly soaking my pillow with a steady deluge of tears (my most effective stress reliever) and finally falling asleep completely and utterly exhausted.

I woke up this morning wondering, how do I start over from a day like that? I’ve done it before – cried myself to sleep and then woke up thinking, ok now it’s a brand new day. But this morning I didn’t really feel that way. Everything was still off. I cracked open my Bible and turned to the Psalms. I started reading without really noticing what Psalm it was. As I read just one chapter themes started leaping off the page – “I will praise the Lord at all times” “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them” “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them” Then I got to verse 16:

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

It was one of those moments when everything else fades and the Bible speaks directly to you. I closed my eyes and just prayed. I confessed my selfishness and bad attitudes that had made every problem bigger than the last yesterday. I praised God for so many things that He’s done in my life and I thanked Him for the promise that He is close to the brokenhearted.

As I did that my breathing got slower, like the air cleared, and I knew how to start over. When life gets tough (like yesterday) I have the tendency to grit my teeth, buckle down, and power through. The only problem with that is I don’t actually have the power to do it. Believe me, yesterday I tried and you see how well that worked out for me and my soggy pillow. God reminded me today that life isn’t about how much I can cram into it, it’s about how closely I can walk right next to Him. There were a million times yesterday when I could have dropped everything and focused on God. I could have gone to Him when I started struggling instead of waiting until my spirit was totally crushed. Today I’m going to take those opportunities.

When I finished praying I read the chapter again, Psalm 34, and I realized something that made me laugh. In level three of our English program here at the Youth Center (the level that I wrote the curriculum for and have taught to six different classes) they memorize Psalm 34 in the Message translation. They do a couple verses a week over the three months and by the end they can say the whole thing. It’s funny because I’ve taught that chapter so many times I could quote it at any moment. Today I was reading a different translation of the Bible, but all of the themes and even some of the phrases are the exact same. If I had looked at the Psalm before I started reading it I might have moved on to another one, because after all, I know that one by heart… Sometimes I forget that the word of God is living and active and that God uses even the most familiar words to continually challenge and change us.

So, it’s about 11 am and I think I’m ready to start my day. Thanks God!!!!!

Sweaty and Happy :-)

2009-06-13T21:12:00.006Z

So far we are loving Bissau. It's pretty much the hotest time of the year, so we're sweating, a LOT! But we're drinking a lot of water, so it's like our own sauna. I have a few more photos from the past few weeks that I thought my be interesting:

This is Jason picking out his sweet new running shoes right before we left for Africa. If you are asking yourself, "do those shoes have toes???" The answer is yes, yes they do. So far he LOVES them.

Here's Sydney chillin' with all of our carry-on luggage in Detroit.

A very pregnant goat eating some trash in Dakar

Eating lunch with friends in a little restaurant by the ocean in Dakar.

This is the boat we took from Dakar (in the north of Senegal) to Ziguinchor (in the south of Senegal). It was really nice, but the people we shared the cabin with were interesting... I don't really understand drunk people...

Some new friends we made on the 14 hour boat ride. We sat at the same table for dinner and the girls were just too cute! He's German and she's Senegalese. They have their hands full with two 17 month-olds!

Jason and I preparing breakfast for everyone (the Wilson's, the McHargue's, and us) on Saturday morning. We sent over dried blueberries and real maple syrup, so we had some amazing pancakes and Jason made some killer breakfast potatoes (his speciality).

Our new favorite place in the whole world! Right outside of the guest house where we live in Bissau they built this lovely little cabana. It is shady, breezy, and heavenly! You can see our little dog, Sydney running towards me as I'm taking this picture. She growing so fast!

Feelings

2009-06-09T16:57:00.000Z

Right now I am sitting in the middle of a huge pile of stuff trying to organize it, but tears keep clouding my eyes – not in the way you think. I am so overwhelmed by how blessed we are! We arrived in Guinea-Bissau on Sunday afternoon and since then we’ve been eating, talking, reuniting, and gathering all of our stuff – from last time and from the container that our team sent over last May. My main goal today was to unpack all of those boxes and make a list of what we need to go buy downtown, but each time I open a box I’ve just been blown away! I found vitamins and nice conditioner for my hair, good pens and Ziploc bags, parmesan cheese and dried fruit, our plastic plates and some knives that actually cut things, an oven thermometer and some screens to get the bugs out of our flour, my very favorite books and a bag of potpourri to make our house smell nice, and the list goes on and on.

This trip to Guinea-Bissau feels different because it is different. We aren’t volunteers coming for 8 months, we’re full time staff moving here for four years. We really are making our home here and that’s good and hard and exciting and just different. Jason and I have been so blessed and we have always had everything that we need, and it’s just so fun to feel like we have some things that are ours as we settle in. So many of you have prayed for our stuff to make it safely over, have given generously to us and our work, and have been part of the whole journey with us and I want to say thank you. From the bottom of my truly grateful heart, thank you for letting God’s love for us spill out through you. Wow, ok I have to turn off the waterworks before I dehydrate myself - hehehehe

Last update before we leave for Bissau

2009-06-05T15:15:00.004Z

The last two times we've been in Dakar were disasters, but this time has been really really nice. It's different than Guinea-Bissau - the Muslim calls to prayer are a lot louder, it's more crowded, and it's a lot dirtier (we are staying in the industrial district, so that could have something to do with it). Some things are the same - it's hot, the air is humid and salty, and for lunch we ate mangoes, fish, and rice.

I took a few more pictures so you can get a little feel for a small part of the capital of Senegal

Sucking on the pit of my first African Mango in a while :-)

Jason about to dig in to some African rice and fish. All that for $.80 - Amazing.

The kids at the guest house LOVE Sydney and they have been tiring her out!

Sydney chillin' with her belly on the cool tile.

We are in Dakar!

2009-06-04T06:48:00.003Z

We are in Dakar!!!!! I'm a little tired, so here are the bullet points:

Flight to Atlanta was great. Sydney hardly even moved.

At the Atlanta airport Sydney ran around in the family bathroom, ate, and got generally worn out.

Flight to Dakar was perfect for Sydney. No crying from her and whenever we took her to the bathroom she peed on the diapers :-) However there were three babies in our same row as us and there wasn't more than 20 minutes of the 10 hours where one of them wasn't screaming, so we didn't sleep much.

When we arrived at the airport in Dakar we ran into an American pastor that we know who works in Senegal. He helped us with our bags and drove us to his hotel. We are here right now, chillin' by the pool and wrestling with Sydney on the grass to her heart's content. It's about 6:30 in the morning and in an hour or so we are going to get a taxi to the missionary guest house where we are staying and then do some serious sleeping.

Thank you so much for your prayers. We got all of our bags, no one said anything about Sydney at customs, and the flights were smooth. It smells like the Africa I know - ocean salt, fish, humid... It's nice. We can't wait to get to Bissau!

I took a few pictures:

Here's Jase playing with Sydney in the grass right now.

This is the view of the ocean from the hotel balcony. Beautiful!

Home

2009-05-14T03:22:00.000Z

Last summer, a few months after we got back from Africa the second time, we were camping with Jason’s family. I was sitting outside crying a little and Paul (Jason’s dad) came up. Now Jason is not really very emotional, and he comes by it honestly (I however, need a good cry every few weeks). Paul asked me what was wrong and I told him that I was having a sad day, which probably seemed a little weird to him at the time. He asked me why, which seemed a little weird to me, don’t people just have sad days for no reason? (ok so maybe that’s just me…) I thought about it and realized that I was missing Africa. I tried to explain how I was missing Guinea-Bissau when I was finally with my family that I had been missing for the past 8 months. The only words I could really come up with were that my heart has two homes now and as long as I’m in one place my heart has times where it feels separated from the other.

There’s a weird dynamic that happens with missionaries. You have a home, and when you go to the new country where you work almost everything reminds you that that place is not your home. You feel awkward, and isolated, but you jump in. You learn the language, you meet the people and try to understand them, and slowly it starts to feel like home too. I remember praying everyday when we were in Guinea-Bissau that God would give my heart a home there; and sometime in the second trip, He did.

[As a little side note, I think it’s the same with heaven. Sometimes when things happen that I don’t understand (usually loss) I’m reminded vividly that I wasn’t made for this. My “home” here on earth is temporary and I’m so happy I’m made for the home that’s eternal. I think that most Christians have experienced that heart longing for the home that they were created for at one point or another.]

Jason and I just bought our plane tickets and we are headed back to Guinea-Bissau on June third. In so many ways I am excited to go back home and at the same time I’m deeply sad to be leaving. I am through and through a 100% homebody. I love being home. I like to take vacations to visit people I know (not new fun places); I like to eat dinner at home, to have people over, I love to be with my family (and my friends that have basically become my family) and I would always rather rent a movie and snuggle up with a blanket than go see one. Home… it’s a strange word when you think about what it means – the place where you belong, the place you know, the place that’s familiar, the place that has the people you love, the place you’re meant to be…

I guess I’m just processing my emotions a little bit. People have been asking me a lot a questions as they have been finding out that Jason and I are headed back:
“Oh Africa, so it’s really like a vacation, right?” (not quite)
“Are you scared because it’s so different?” (sometimes)
“Are you sad that you are going to miss some important things in America?” (yes)
“Do you miss your friends in Africa?” (yes)
“Are you ready?” (mostly, hehe)

The one question that really got me thinking was when someone asked me, “Why are you so excited to go somewhere that’s so hard and do something that you don’t know if you can do? Why don’t you just stay here and be normal?” I giggled a little, and then thought a lot. It’s hard to explain, but in many ways Guinea-Bissau is where my life is right now. The job that I have over there isn’t a job; it’s my purpose – maybe not for the rest of my life, but right now. The people that I’m helping and the lives that God is changing, that’s my point.

So we’re leaving, and I feel like part of me is complete again, my purpose is restored, and my life fits; but I also feel like part of me is missing – you, the people that have made me who I am, the places I know, the life that makes sense. As we head out please be praying for us, that God would protect our hearts, and that we would truly make our home where He is.

Wind

2009-04-27T20:07:00.005Z

I love the wind. I don’t know why because wind seems to symbolize change, and I’m not a big fan of that (and the fact that it always blows my hair into my mouth…). I think I love the freshness of it. Wind always reminds me of how big the world is. It travels so fast and some days my life seems so slow. I just want to jump high into the air and be carried away.

Wind also reminds me of the Holy Spirit – unpredictable, refreshing, and making things move. I am sitting in the living room now, looking out the window and seeing even the toughest old trees dance in the wind. I love the analogy there – dancing with joy at the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Lately we’ve had some crazy wind around here. Roofs have peeled off of buildings, trees have crashed to the ground, and gazebos haven’t stood a chance! Sometimes God’s power is like that in our lives too. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like dancing with the Holy Spirit it feels like being ripped into the air and tumbling end over end for miles!

When Jase and I were on the way back from Colorado in February we came across a huge wind farm. There had to be 200 gigantic windmills all turning, peacefully cranking out the megawatts. Jason was in heaven so of course we got off the freeway and did some exploring.

What a stud!

A few of the windmills that had Jason drooling!

Bummer... :-)

2009-04-26T22:44:00.003Z

Yesterday I took Jason to the airport in Detroit (more about where he was going later). On the way down, at about 26 mile, we passed a sign for Caribou Coffee (which I LOVE). I didn’t want to make Jason late for his flight so I decided that I would get some on the way back home. I made it down to Metro, dropped Jason off, and then proceeded to think about how awesome my latte was going to be once I got back up to 26 mile.

In my dreamy state of anticipation I barely noticed that the sky was getting a bit gray and cloudy. I was only thinking of the warm, perfectly steamy foam that was going to sit beautifully on top of my latte. I passed a Tim Hortons – nope, some Dunkin Donuts – sorry, and even a few Starbucks – not a chance! Nothing was going to distract me from the luscious Caribou Coffee that awaited me.

As I neared 26 mile road and visions of caffeine rapture danced in my brain, I saw a construction sign. I paid it no attention… then came another one. When I glanced at it I saw something about 26 mile road… gasp! I looked again. The exit was closed… road construction… Right at the moment when I realized that my latte dreams were evaporating into thin air the sky blackened, the wind blustered, and the heavens opened. Just like that I was in the middle of a furious downpour. I choose to believe that God was also disappointed by my lack of latte. Thanks Big Guy :-)

For those of you who are wondering why in the world Jason was headed to the airport, I guess that part of the story is interesting too… hehe For the past two months Jason has been working tirelessly to get a shipping container ready to go to Africa. For those of you who don't have experience with that sort of thing (most people) a shipping container is basically the same size as a Semi truck. The church in Tulsa who donated the brick making machine ('the dirt smasher' as Jason affectionately calls it) is also donating several other pieces of equipment that will be really helpful to have in Africa. So they flew Jason out there to help them collect all of the equipment and speak to their Sunday school class about what we're going to do with it. So today he's in Tulsa and after that they are headed to San Antonio to pick up a few things and then on to New Orleans to load them all up in the container. He's pretty excited :-)

Cheeeeeese!

2009-03-25T19:07:00.004Z

I am pleased to announce that I am awesome at cheese making! :-) We can't usually get mozzarella cheese in Bissau and Jason and I really miss it! I found out that it's not really very hard to make it - unlike cheddar, provolone, swiss, etc it doesn't have to age in a 55 degree cave for months on end. In fact you can start with milk and two hours later be eating delicious mozzarella!

I got a kit from www.cheesemaking.com so that I could try it out and hopfully perfect my technique before we head back, and it worked! I've only done it twice so far and the first time it turned out pretty creamy, more like cream cheese; but the second time it was perfect! I took a few pictures of the process, so check it out!

I bought milk from Kroger, mixed in the citric acid, and heated it up on the stove

Once it got to 90 degrees I added the rennet, heated it a little more, then let it sit so the curd could form. Once the curd was pretty solid I cut it up, put it back on the heat and waited 'till it got to about 110 degrees.

I thought about trying it, but it didn't really look very appatizing...

Despite it's somewhat gross appearance I had faith! I drained off the whey, added salt, and then heated it in the microwave carefully to 135 degrees

At this point I was starting to doubt that it would all come together since the only step I had left was to stretch it like taffy. Majically, as I started stretching, the cheese came together. This step was definitely the most fun part of all!

Nice huh?

Fun in Colorado

2009-02-16T16:40:00.008Z

It's really been a crazy new year so far! We left Michigan January first and we just got back this week. We were in Little Rock visiting my parents, Kansas City visiting my sister, we spent a week in Denver helping Jason and Erica get ready for their wedding and then after they got married we went to Palmer Lake, Colorado for three weeks of missionary training. It was great to see my family (I've already posted a few blogs about that part of the trip) and we had a great time seeing Colorado!

Over the past month I've come to the conclusion that it's pretty hard to be in Colorado and not be impressed by the hugeness of God. Everyday when we woke up, we looked out the window, and just stared at the gorgeous mountains surrounding us. They were breathtakingly beautiful. It was really weird that everywhere we went had such awesome scenery. You just don't expect to see a McDonalds with a spectacular mountain view!

This is the building where we had slept, ate,
and had all of our classes for three weeks.
t was really well designed and we had a great time.

This is another shot of our building on a really frosty morning.
There was a lot of open space around us for hiking.

I love hazy mountains in the distance!

One evening a group of friends and I climbed this mountain
(just behind our building) to watch the sun set. It was so worth it!

Another picture from the hike.

One cool part of our training was that we had both of the weekends in the middle of the three weeks off. So, we spent both Saturdays trekking up some pretty sweet slopes and visiting some awesome natural wonders with friends. Since we were already at 7225 feet when we started hiking we got quite a lung work out! One cool place we visited was the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

When we were in this crevice a pigeon made a
loud flapping noise right behind us but because of
the acoustics in the cracks it sounded like an
army of pigeons! I jumped and almost fell out of the rock!

So, maybe even after just this little glimpse you can agree with me - God is huge!

New Game

2009-02-04T01:43:00.005Z

There's this funny looking game that I keep seeing people play during the evenings here at MTI. I got so curious that I finally tried it out this past weekend. It's called Settlers of Catan and the best way that I can think of to describe it is a combination of Risk and Monopoly. I'm still learning the ropes, but all in all I really like it. If you're looking for a new board game you should check it out!

I actually won the third time I played, so it's not super-hard to learn. (Jason would like it noted that he traded me the cards so that I could win on that turn and if he hadn't traded me he would've won on his turn - so technically it was a co-win... hehe)

hiking at over 7000 feet

2009-01-26T03:39:00.004Z

For the past week we've been at MTI (Mission Training International) in Colorado. It's a three week training, so we're just really getting started. So far it's been pretty good. There are 40 different missionaries here from all different missions organizations, so we've had a good time getting to know them and hearing about where they're going and what they want to do there.

Yesterday we and some of our new friends went on a hike up a trail that goes by a few reservoirs in the mountains nearby. We're already at 7225 feet, so hiking up the mountains on the trail was a serious lung workout!!!!!

Since it was snowy and the water was frozen we took some videos to show when we get back to Guinea-Bissau. I think our friends there will get a kick out of them.

I took a few pictures, and I thought you might like to see them.

Yes, you are seeing this picture correctly, Jason is wearing his Chacos on a hike through the snow. He insisted that his toes were not cold, but I was not buying it :-)

At the second reservoir the water was completely frozen so we took a video of Jason jumping on it.

This is our friend Ian standing on some boulders in the middle of the frozen river.

Our classes end at 4 each day so we have some time to get a few things done and hang out in the evenings. We brought the game "Pit" along with us and we had a rousing game on Friday night!

This is right before the market opened!

Big Dog

2009-01-22T02:50:00.005Z

I never really grew up with any pets, but Jason definitely did! His family had (at one time or another) rabbits, a chinchilla, various birds, a cat, fish, chickens, geese, hamsters, a mouse (that Jason randomly caught and fed until it died... yuck), and lots of Golden Retrievers. Out of all of those pets I think the dogs have the largest place in Jason's heart. He really loves big, playful, friendly dogs. When we were staying at Amanda and Scott's apartment he had a lot of frolic time with their dog, Mocha.

Mocha is super cute. He's mostly chocolate lab and he loves to play (although he is frequently distracted from whatever game you are playing with him). He is also apparently very interested in the world of computers...

You can't fool us Mocha, we see you looking out of the corner of your eye at that magnificent laptop!

Like I said before, I've never had a pet before, so I've never really bonded with an animal. Maybe all of you guys are pet people and you are just shaking your head at my callousness... hehe It's pretty obvious that Jason will always be a big dog lover, so I hope to join you one day :-)

Song of the Year

2009-01-17T16:57:00.003Z

I know that a lot of people make New Years Resolutions, I don't know a whole lot of people who actually stick to them... hehe Human nature I guess. I used to be a big resolution maker, I really like goals, so it fits. A few years ago I was in a chapel service at Olivet (ok, that was probably my junior year in college so at least five years ago... yikes!) and I heard a song that literally changed my life. I think that most of us have had a moment where a song perfectly captured exactly what how we were feeling at the time, and this one captured how I had been feeling for years. I decided that I would make the song a mission for my life. It's really simple so I put it here for you to read it:

One Pure and Holy Passion – by Passion

Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you
To know and follow hard after you
To grow as your disciple in the truth
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing you my Lord
Lead me on and I will run after you

I think about that song whenever I'm making a big decision and it just seems to bring the focus that I need. The reason that I bring this up along with New Years Resolutions is that for the past few years I feel like there have been a lot of times where God has given me a song that teaches me something I really need to hear. Sometimes they are for a year and sometimes they are for a particular season. All of the songs really made a huge difference to me and in light of the New Year's season I thought I would share a tiny bit about them and how God used them.

The first time we went to Africa we had been there for a month or so and I was listening to some music that Jason had gotten right before we left. There was one song that I had heard a bunch before but when I heard it surrounded by the particular circumstances that I had the song took on a whole new dimension. It became my motivation to seek God's plan for me everyday in Guinea-Bissau. Sometimes I would really doubt my effectiveness as a missionary, English teacher, etc and this song would really give me reassurance. The whole song is awesome, but here just the first verse:

In the Blink of an Eye – by Mercy Me

You put me here for a reason
You have a mission for me
You knew my name and You called it
Long before I learned to breathe

Sometimes I feel disappointed
By the way I spend my time
How can I further Your kingdom
When I'm so wrapped up in mine

If I knew I was going to have a hard day I would put on my MP3 player when I was getting ready and just play that song a few times. I usually ended up singing along at the top of my lungs... The second time we were in Bissau God gave me a song that really helped me focus on His most basic plan for me – that my purpose is to love God and to be loved fully by Him. Here's the chorus:

Made to Love – by TobyMac

I was made to love You
I was made to find You
I was made just for You
Made to adore You
I was made to love
And be loved by You
You were here before me
You were waiting on me
And You said You'd keep me
Never would You leave me
I was made to love and be loved by You

I say all of this to say that right around January first I was listening to the radio and a song just touched a major nerve in my heart. The guy singing is just asking God to pull him out of his self-centered way of seeing the world and to open His eyes to really see people the way that God does. Sometimes in Guinea-Bissau it's hard to see people the way that God does. They are so different and sometimes it can be really frustrating struggling to understand the culture and the people. This song reminds me that what I really really need, more than anything else, is to have God's perspective when I see the people around me. So here's the chorus:

Give Me Your Eyes – by Brandon Heath

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see

So, that is my song for 2009, or at least this phase of it. When I look ahead to the rest of the year I know that in a lot of ways I've never been more excited or nervous or sure about any other phase of my life. I can't wait to see the changes that God is going to make in the people of Guinea-Bissau!

Happy New Year!

Daddy-Daughter Date

2009-01-16T18:27:00.004Z

A few times when I was younger my Dad picked me up from school and took me out to lunch. We called it a Daddy-Daughter date. I don't know if any of you ever had this tradition in your family or not (maybe we're just weird... ok not maybe... probably?... No, I think I have to go with definitely... we're definitely a little weird). When Jase and I were in Little Rock after New Years I made my Dad take me out on a lunch date. We went out for Mexican food, which is a shared love of ours and we got to talk for about 2 hours. We had a good time and I felt kinda like a little girl again.

The whole family was in Little Rock for New Years and since our last good family picture was a little while ago we took a new one. Not a bad looking bunch :-)

Back Row: Jordan, Scott, Amanda, Emily, Jason, Rachel

Front Row: Dad, Mom

a giant snowman in New York

2008-12-10T20:25:00.005Z

I love Thanksgiving. Really, it's one of my favorite times of year. Being with family, focusing on what everyone is thankful for, it's great!

This year for Thanksgiving Jason and I journeyed to Binghamton, NY. That's where my mom grew up and her parents still live there. We had Thanksgiving with them which was super fun! If you've never had Grandma VanVorce's cranberry relish you're missing out big time!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was Grandma and Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary so all of their kids, grandkids, and a whole bunch of other people gathered for a big celebration. My sister Rachel is a senior in culinary school and she is especially awesome at all things having to do with dessert. She made about 60 roses out of pale yellow fondant for the cake at the anniversary party and she let me paint the edges of them gold. They were sensational!

Me and Rachel hard at work:

The VanVorce clan at the party:

My grandparents had clip magnets made to give away at their party so naturally as we were cleaning up Jason decided to clip some of the extras to his beard and eyebrows. They made a lot of noise clicking around as he was talking... What a stud! hehe

One of the major highlights of the trip was the gigantic snowman that the VanVorce grandchildren built. We spent a few hours working on it. My grandparents live on a big hill so it was pretty easy to roll the snowballs down the hill and make them huge!

Rachel and I smoothing out the stomach before the boys hoisted it up:

Jason imitating the finished product:

I don't think that guy is going to be melting for a while!

October Happenings

2008-11-23T19:01:00.007Z

I haven't blogged in forever! Not because we haven't had much going on, really because I haven't been able to catch myself coming and going :-)

One of the most fun things that we did in October was the Simpson Park Camp youth retreat. It my first real test back from Guinea-Bissau to see if I can still make it in cold weather, and I am afraid to say that I cannot... I slept in the dorm with all of the other girls. As they were dreaming peacefully in their PJs I was fully clothed, doubled socked, inside my sleeping bag, with a hat and a jacket... hehe but I did survive just fine. I was the youth speaker so I talked about my favorite Bible story - Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We talked about having people to stand with and what things are worth standing for and standing against. I threw in a few embarrassing stories from Africa, and everyone had a good time.

Jason and I had so much fun on the trains in Europe that we thought we would give the American train system a try. Youth for Christ needed us for some training in Denver the Monday after the youth retreat, before the crack of dawn on Sunday we drove to Chicago and them hopped a train to Denver. There are a lot of things about train travel that are much nicer than plane travel. No security probes, no security lines, tons of baggage room so you don't have to check anything, footrests that make the seats into recliners, enough room between the seats to actually recline, and electrical outlets by the seats. Not bad...

After we steamed into Denver in style we stayed there for a week of meetings. Most of it was not exactly riveting stuff - how to file taxes overseas, who to call about different paperwork things, and stuff like that. We were interviewed by a panel about our calling into ministry and after a huge battery of personal, psychological, and marriage tests we spent a morning with two psychologists. The outcome of all of it was that YFC is crazy about us and we are totally accepted without reservations to be full-time missionaries! YAY!

We spent an afternoon in the mountains with our friends Jason and Erica and then they dropped us off at the train station to roll home. Unfortunately, the train that was supposed to arrive at 7 pm was 5 and a half hours behind schedule and was not expected until after midnight... When we asked how this happened we were informed that the signals on the track were out for 40 miles so the conductor had to get out and walk the train through each intersection... Yikes! Jason and Erica came back and picked us back up and we spent most of the evening in a little cafe. They left us around 11 pm and we were loaded on the train around 1, ready for some sleep :-) The building behind us in the picture is the Amtrak station and the neon on the station says "Union Station Travel by Train". So I was wondering where the train was and Jason was checking his watch.... Gotta love us.... hehe

I leave some other adventures for a later blog!

Odness and Autumn

2008-10-13T23:05:00.009Z

I've always known that I like to eat fruit that is a little less ripe than other people. This has been especially evident living with Jason's family. They love fruit the most when it is past ripe. You can tell who went grocery shopping just by feeling the produce. Is the fruit rock-hard, it must've been Emily. Is it gushy and mushy, not Emily. Anyway I tell you all of this because I've discovered my new favorite fruit - unripe pears. mmmmmmmm

It all started because one of our neighbors has a few pear trees. He harvests the pears and cans them, but he has one tree that ripens later than the others. He already canned all that he wanted, so he told Marilee that she could come over and pick the pears off of the last tree anytime. She promptly went over and picked quite a few. And then the family waited... and waited... They just didn't seem to get soft. After a few days I cracked one open. Admittedly, they are pretty hard. If I eat two my jaw hurts a little, but they are sooooooooo good!

While everyone else has their fingers crossed, hoping for a little softness, I've been in heaven. Seriously I've been eating at least three every day. I like them so much that on Saturday Marilee, Sam, and I went and picked several more bags of them (check out the picture on the left). Y-U-M!

Today I went for a walk to take some pictures of the trees around here. Jason and I haven't been in the States in the fall the past two years so I guess I started to forget how beautiful they are. I am excited to take the pictures back to Africa because their trees don't change color. I'm trying to take pictures of the outdoors in all of the different seasons so they can see what it's like here. Here are a few cute ones from my walk:

Open House in Marlette

2008-09-23T19:28:00.018Z

So I said I would fill you in about the open house we had in Marlette. First of all it was really fun! We were in the Marlette train depot and from 1 to 2 we had a family pot-luck and then from 2 to 5 we had an open house for anyone who wanted to come.Jason, Emily, Aunt Doris, Aunt Marilyn, and Aunt Chris chatting during the family time.

We had a great time hanging out with our family and there were quite a few visitors who dropped in. Most of the time we were just mingling, but we also did a few skits in Creole at different times for the audience. First we pretended that I was trying to buy some vegetables from Jason at the market. We had encore requests, so we did a similar market skit later too. We also demonstrated how the people in some of the tribes in Guinea-Bissau traditionally greet each other – not with “hi” or “good morning” but with a more obvious thing like “you are sitting” or “you are eating” to which the person being greeted replies “yes, and you are passing” (or standing or walking, etc.) We stopped every few lines to translate so people could hear the how the language sounds in conversation and still understand what was going on.

The last time we got up to talk Jason decided it would be cool if I pretended to be a Guinean woman telling a story of a time when I was pregnant and went to the hospital to have my baby, since that whole process is so different over there than it is in the States. So I told the story in Creole, stopping every sentence or so for Jason to translate. People were laughing, so we must've been doing something right!

We also had a group question and answer time and people were asking great questions. It gave us an opportunity to talk about the way that the people in Guinea-Bissau live, what they like, what their greatest challenges are, what we want to do when we go back there, why we want to go there at all, and lots of other things like that.

All-in-all it was a great day!

All of the Grandparents who were at our party: Grandma Huggins, Grandpa Huntoon, Grandma Huntoon, me, Jase, Great-Grandma Taylor, Grandma Atkins, Grandpa Atkins.

Flipped Out

2008-09-22T02:23:00.004Z

Here is a shot of me with my hair flipped out.

That's how I've been wearing the new short locks most days. You might also notice that I am wearing a hoodie. Yes, I am cold and tomorrow is officially only the first day of fall... I don't know if I'm going to survive in Michigan until January. You might start seeing me in layers of hoodies :-)

Jobs and Hair

2008-09-18T00:52:00.007Z

I haven't blogged in so long and many things have been happening lately. Jason and I sent out our first newsletters and we had a fantastic open house in Marlette to talk to people about what we have been and are going to be doing in Guinea-Bissau (pictures and stories in a blog to follow). We both got part-time jobs to pay for gas and other little expenses over the next few months. Jason is working in the shipping department at Champion Bus Factory and I am working at Tim Hortons. For those of you who are not from Michigan or Canada Tim Hortons is a donut / coffee / sandwich chain. It's a little bit like Dunkin Donuts or Shipleys but it has a larger variety of food and the coffees are more like a Starbucks (expect that our cappuccinos do come out of a machine).

The biggest thing that has happened to me is that I donated 10 inches of my hair. I've been talking about doing it for so long that Jason didn't think I ever would, so of course I had to prove him wrong.

As you can see, the long hair was just too hot. I pulled it up almost everyday.

This is a picture of me right after the bulk of the hair was chopped off.

And here's a picture a few days after the cut. Recently I've been flipping it out at the bottom and I like that better, but I don't have a picture of that yet. I'll post one soon and you can tell me which one you like better :-)

Cool News

2008-07-25T12:53:00.002Z

This last time we were in Africa Jason and I decided that God's not done with us there yet. We thought and prayed and talked about it tons and we really felt like the needs of Guinea-Bissau and the specific ways that the Church and the Youth Center have of meeting those needs correspond really well with the talents and abilities that God has given us.

It wasn't an easy decision. Living in West Africa is one of the hardest things we have ever done. It has forced us to depend on God and it has changed us in a million ways. With that said, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's one of the best things I've ever done. The more that we thought there was a possibility that we could be leaving forever the more our hearts broke.

Since we decided to go back God has confirmed that decision in a million ways. We need to raise financial support and spend some time with our families, but if everything goes smoothly we are hoping to be heading over to Guinea-Bissau in January. We are planning to go for two years, come home for a few months, and then head out for another two years. After that, only God knows, and I'm ok with that.

Because we are heading back we decided that it would be really cool to have a place where all of our information could be organized so that people can keep up with what we're doing. So... I now have my own website!!!!!! (shared with Jason... hehe): www.jasonandemilyatkins.com!

The website has lots of different pages with pictures, videos, and information about what we've done in the past, what we're up to now, and plans that we have for the future. It's still a work in progress and over the next few weeks we are going to be adding more stuff to virtually every page.

Along with the new site I have a new blog: emilymarieatkins.blogspot.com. Myspace has been good to me, but there's a lot of things it can't do and a lot of people have had problems getting on our blog. Anyone can see my new blog at anytime and anyone with a google account can leave comments (to see how to get a google account, read my first blog on the new site). So, it's with a little sadness that I say goodbye to my myspace blog. I am still going to keep my account for now, but I don't think I'll be on it super often. Feel free to check out the new site and let me know if you want to get an email when I post blogs at the new address.

I'll leave you with a funny picture of Jason inside a tree that I took earlier this summer.

New Stuff

2008-07-16T18:59:00.004Z

Welcome to my new blog! I hope that this one will be easier to get to and more fun for everyone! Anyone can read my blogs but if you want to leave comments you need to have a gmail address or a google account. If you want to get a gmail address go to: www.gmail.com to sign up. If you don't want a gmail address but you would still like to be able to leave comments you can go to: www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount to sign up for a google account with a non-gmail email address.

Right now we are in Arkansas soaking up some sun, visiting my family, and working on our new website. It will probably be a few more weeks before we get it totally done, but if you want to check out the work in progress go to www.jasonandemilyatkins.com

Berlin

2008-07-12T16:03:00.001Z

By the time we got to Berlin we were pretty exhausted. I'm not that great of a traveler, and even though we were seeing some pretty amazing places, I really wanted to go home. We got to our hostel and pretty much crashed and burned the first night. The city has two buses that just go around all day and visiting cool sites, so we rode around on one for a while and got off at a cool park. In all of the other cities we had stayed mostly in the metro areas, but in Berlin since we were so wiped out we decided to take a leisurely stroll.

The park was beautiful and I tried my hand at a few flower pictures.

We found a low wall by a pretty lake and Jason took a load off for an hour or so.

After that we did some more exploring and found a few more peaceful parks in the city. One of them had lots of fountains and statues.

We liked this one because the boy is riding on a goat. Don't ask why, but that struck us as pretty funny.

After that we bought some food and went to bed early. The next day we did some historical exploration. We went to the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag - which is the German parliament building. Tons of German history has happened in this building and we even got to look through some glass windows at a curent parliment session. The building itself was pretty old and impressive, so we waited in line for a freezing hour and half to go up to the top and see the city from this huge glass dome thing on the building. The views of the city were nice, but the dome itself was far more impressive.

It had this huge mirrored funnel down the middle that brings natural light and heat down into the building to make it more energy efficient.

One thing I have to tell you about Berlin is that Berliners love Currywurst. You may be wondering what that is, so let me explain. Germans in general love sausages of all kinds. After trying quite a few from street vendors here and there I can see why . In German a sausage is a "wurst". The currywurst is a particular kind of sausage which is deep fried and then smothered in a tomato sauce (like a sweet catchup) and then dusted with curry powder. It's pretty good. There are currywurst stands all over Berlin and near the famous Check Point Charlie I found this one.

Currywurst, I salute you.

The next day we took a walking Cold War tour of Berlin. It was pretty fun and I'm glad we did it. We learned all about the Stazi spies and the crazy files they had on people - at one point they were actually collecting people's smells! They would bring people into an interrogation room and make them sit on their hands, palms down. Then they would ask them all kinds of questions, and finally let them go. They would take the special cloth (that the person's hands had sweat all over) off of the chair, tag it and put it in a jar, presumably in case they ever needed to set the dogs after that person. Crazy. They also had all kinds of high tech spy gear and at the height of their power they had an estimated one spy for ever six citizens... Yikes!

At the end of the tour we got to go see the Berlin wall. It was different than I had ever pictured. I never understood how the wall had gone up overnight, but at first it was a wall of soldiers and barbed wire. Then gradually the first wall was built and then a second wall was built about 100 yards behind it. The area in between the two walls (called the death strip) had absolutely no cover and was patrolled constantly. The ground was raked sand or raked gravel so footprints stuck out like sore thumbs. Here's a picture of the main wall as it is now.

We also visited a section of the wall that has been restored and has the death strip and everything. It was chilling.

The history tour was definitely an eye opener, but not really very joyous. Then again, the history itself hasn't been very joyous either.

We went to some more monuments after the tour. We saw the holocaust memorial and the old Jewish cemetery. We also went to a super old Jewish synagogue. After that we saw a memorial dedicated to the victims of communism. The shattered man is gradually walking into the future and with each step he is becoming more and more whole.

After that we caught a train back to Frankfurt and then some assorted trams and buses back to the YFC guest house. We relaxed and worked and organized some photos the next day and then we hopped on a plane back to the States.

Prague

2008-07-09T16:08:00.000Z

Ok, so a long time ago I promised I'd blog about Prague and Berlin. I've been back in the States for a few months and I've been running around like crazy, but that is really no excuse not to show you some cool photos from the end of our trip! Hehe

Before I start talking about those cities I wanted to show you some more pictures of the really cool castle that we ran like crazy to see (it was the castle that Walt Disney used as his inspiration for the sleeping beauty castle - look at the last blog for a description of that fun afternoon... ).

This is a picture of one of the sides of the castle. Believe it or not only a third of the original planned castle was built when the king died and it was never finished.

This is the front of the castle just a few steps after you go through the main gate.

Jason snapped this one just before the lady said that we were not allowed to take any pictures of the inside. Every single surface was painted, or carved, or decorated in some way.

We got to Prague in the late afternoon and went to our hostel to check in. We stayed in a really cool hostel with a nice kitchen. The first night we went to a grocery store and bought some food to make.

While we were cooking in the kitchen some girls came in and ate with us. One way from the US and had been backpacking around New Zealand before coming to Europe and the other was from Argentina. We decided to go up to Prague castle with them the next day. Prague castle in the biggest ancient castle in the world and it's history goes back to the 9^th century, so we were looking forward to it.

We stopped on the way to take a picture of the girls.

When we got there we found out that they only allow 5000 people a day to actually enter the castle itself and since it had been open for an hour and a half all of those tickets had been sold. We did get to buy tickets for the the other buildings that are part of the castle compound and they were really cool. They have a cathedral that was built over about 600 years starting around the 10^th century and that was definitely worth seeing.

This is the cathedral.

It was pretty dark inside the cathedral, so the pictures don't really do it justice.

We climbed up in a really tall tower (about a million steps in a tiny spiral staircase) and got to see sweeping views of Prague that were pretty cool.

In this picture you can see the building that makes up the castle wall and then the city beyond it. Most of the roofs in Prague were redish-orange.

Here you can see part of the cathedral and some more of the castle.

We went back down into the cathedral, poked around a little, and the looked at lots of the other buildings, a museum, and the castle gardens. It was pretty cool. One funny thing that we noticed was in the church the confession booths were roped off...

tisk tisk

I loved these trees! They were in the gardens just outside of the castle

We did some exploring of the city and we saw lots of beautiful old row houses

Most of you know I love to make jewelry. The Czech Republic produces lots of amazing fire polished glass and bohemian crystal beads, so I really wanted to buy some while we were there. We found lots of little boutique bean shops, but the beads were ridiculous (more than a dollar each...) I was starting to get pretty bummed out so I asked a girl who worked at our hostel if she knew of a good place to buy them. She told Jason and I about a little out of the way market, so we set out. We walked all around and at first we only saw stalls with fruit and trinkets, but deep in the center we found the beads. They were way cheaper than the stores and I bought quite a few of them. It was definitely the highlight of my time in Prague.

So many treasures, so little time...

Ok, I have a million things to do, so I'll blog about Berlin later. This week, I promise

Munich, Füssen, Salzburg, & Dresden

2008-04-23T16:10:00.000Z

We have some train time from Prague to Berlin, so I though I would catch up with you guys a little.

Munich was cold (have you noticed a theme to my blogs about Europe?), but fun. We went to a sweet technology museum that has pretty much everything ever invented. Jason and I both thought that the coolest things were the first machines. Maybe we've been living in a land of limited electricity too long, but the stuff they could do using water pressure was amazing! I also really liked the glass blowing part. There was a guy sitting there making beautiful wine goblets with a big blowtorch.

While we were walking around we spotted this statue and I just couldn't resist... Those of you from AR know what I'm talking about!

Calling the Hogs!

I love bread, I always have. In Germany I have discovered a new love – the soft pretzel. In Munich I saw something that made my heart skip a beat – a GIANT soft pretzel . It was amazing :)

On our last day in Munich we went over to see a really cool castle around 11 in the morning. When we got there I realized that it was not the castle that I thought we were going to. (It was the Schloss Nymphenburg and the other one was the Schloss Neuschwanstein – an honest mistake...) The Schloss Nymphenburg was huge and beautiful, but it was just in the middle of the city. The one I had wanted to see was the one that Walt Disney patterned his castle after – on a big mountain with towering spires.

We were planning on traveling to Saltzberg that day and our tickets are only limited to 5 days of traveling, not five trips. We checked the guide book and the city with Schloss Neuschwanstein wasn't too far south of Munich, so we decided to go. We took a few quick pictures and went back to the train station. (I'll have Jason post some of the pictures because we didn't take them with my camera)

When we got to the station we found out that the next train to Füssen was leaving in about 11 minutes. We talked about it quickly and decided it would work, but then we remembered that our bags were still at the hostel. We tore out of the train station and ran to the hostel (a few blocks away) as fast as we could. We grabbed the bags and ran back to the train station only to arrive 3 minutes after the train left. The cold dry air was such a shock to my lungs that when we got to the platform I almost died from an asthma attack (or at least that's what it felt like... hehe).

We waited for the next train and got to Füssen a little after 4. We didn't get to the castle ticket office until 4:40 and she said that the only remaining castle tour in English was at 5:50. Perfect! The only problem was that the bus that would've taken us up to the castle wasn't working. Remember how I said the castle was on top of a huge hill... We busted it up the hill, running as much as we could, and it took us about 25 minutes to get to the top. Then we relaxed and took some pictures before the tour. When the tour started we found out that we couldn't take any pictures inside the castle at all, so Jason lugging his 15 pound backpack all the way up the hill might have been a mistake.

Jason took some really cool pictures of the outside, but I thought I would show you a few of mine just as a little preview.

This is the view from the castle. It was a pretty hazy day, so the picture's not awesome. I told you it was really high up!

This is part of the outside.

The marble on the castle was really beautiful.

The castle was definitely worth it. It was nice to walk around, take some pictures, and relax outside while we waited for the tour so that we could go in. The inside of the castle was amazing! I am still bummed that we didn't get to take any pictures! Every single surface of everything was painted or carved or somehow intricately designed. I can't even imagine how much work went into it.

Unfortunately the tour group ahead of us was a huge private group and they took a long time so our tour was slowed down a lot. Near the end Jason and I realized that we had less than half an hour before the bus that would take us to from the part of town the ticket office was in to the part of town our train was going to leave from. We tore out of the castle and ran back down that huge hill. We got to the bus station breathless and shaky-legged, but we beat the bus by about 3 minutes. We got to the train on time and we were on our way to Salzburg.

In the middle of the journey we had to change trains and while we were waiting I noticed some peanut M&M's in the vending machine. I marched over and deposited my 60 cents, but the candy got stuck. No problem I thought, I'll just buy another bag and the two will fall together. I counted up the rest of my change and it was only 58 cents . Jason banged on the machine to no avail. I was about to give up, but I decided to see if a gentle body slam might loosen my precious snack. Sure enough, it wiggled a little. I think I slammed into the machine about 15 times, but at last I was victorious!

Because of our detour we didn't get in to Salzburg until just before midnight. We had a hostel booked, so we went to the tram platform. Our hostel was on the other side town and at this point we discovered that all of the public transportation in Salzburg shuts down just before midnight... We lugged our bag around to about 7 hotels within walking distance of the train station and all of them were full, so at 2 am we just went back to the train station to wait until 5 when the trams started running again. That was literally the coldest three hours of my life!

We listened to some podcasts and we got to chat with some nice people at the station, but we didn't get any sleep. At 5 am we locked our bags in a locker and jumped on a bus to warm up and see some of the city. The warm bus made us very tired and we were both asleep when we got back to the train station. We tried another bus and we stayed awake for a little bit, but after a few minutes we dozed off again. When we got back to the train station the second time we found a bakery and got some food and coffee and then hit the town.

I am sure that our experience was slightly tainted by the freezing night at the train station, but Salzburg wasn't really that great. We didn't go on any tours or see any of the Mozart stuff, so I'm sure there were a lot of things that we missed out on. We really just ran around on the busses for the morning and took some pictures along the river that runs through town. By lunch time we were ready to get back to Germany. We took a train back to Munich and then on to Dresden. We slept a lot on that train, and it was lovely!

A few shots in Salzburg

The mountains were pretty amazing!

Dresden was awesome, probably my favorite city so far. Most of the time we were there it was cold and rainy, but it was still cool. There were lots of interesting old buildings, our hostel was nice, the transportation system was German (which is way better than anyone else's), but the highlight was the Hot Spoon. It was a soup restaurant close to our hostel and we shared several bowls there on different occasions.

Here is a picture of Jason in love :)

We used the all-you-can-ride day passes for the city public transportation systems in other cities, but we got the most use out of it in Dresden. Because it was raining we saw tons of the city from the trams. At 6 euro for the two of us for the day it was the cheapest tour ever. Sometimes I was not that great at reading the map, so we got lost several times which just meant that we saw even more of Dresden.

One place where we did hop off the tram and walk around was an old palace in the middle of town.

This is just one of the buidlings. There were several in this same style all in a big square.

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the places that we stayed, but this hostel room in Dresden was so cute I had to snap a few.

Here is our room. It was a six bed dorm. (I was sitting on the other pair of bunks)

And here is the view out the window. Pretty nice, huh?

All-in-all we are having a great time. I'll blog about Prague later, but right now I'm a little tired.

New Clothes

2008-04-16T16:12:00.000Z

Written on Tuesday morning:

Right now we are riding on a super fast ICE train heading from Stuttgart to Munich. We are excited to see a new city, but also very sad to leave Anna. We had a really great time! We had dinner at her parents' house on Saturday and then we went to a concert. After breakfast we spent most of Sunday in Tübingen, which is a beautiful old German city.

Anna and I enjoying some hot cocoa in Tübingen

Then we had dinner with her parents again (so good!!!!!), and on Monday we spent the day shopping and hanging out in the town where she lives, Karlsruhe. She told us a little about Germany (including some tips about train travel) and she steered us toward some pretty excellent German food.

I think that I have mentioned that it's cold here... We didn't exactly have clothes fit for the blustery chill to bring with us, so yesterday we went clothes shopping with Anna. She took us to a second-hand shop and I got a sweet ski jacket for 8 euros! I am snuggled up in it as I'm typing this, and I love it. Jason got a jacket, a sweater, and a nice shirt (all for quite cheap), so he's feeling good too.

After that we got some wonderful German food and then we went to the one euro store (like the dollar store). I was looking for mittens, but they didn't have any. It was actually Jason who made the real discovery. The only shoes that he has here are his Chacos. They are perfect for Africa, but his feet have been chilly here in the land of winter so we were checking around to see if we could pick up some cheap shoes. In the one euro store he purchased, not shoes, but toe socks. That's right. Jason is now walking around Germany in Chacos and toe socks. He is in love with them and he thinks that they have the magic power to make the crosswalk lights turn green. It works about 50% of the time, so I guess the jury's still out on that one.

The three of us with our new clothes.

Water and Ice Cream

2008-04-13T16:16:00.000Z

I forgot to include two pictures that I had wanted to put in my blog about the trip. The day before we left I did a little bit of laundry and Jason took a picture of me scrubbing on the wash board. Humerously, the girl who cleans the guest rooms saw me washing and told me to stop so that she could get more soap. Then when she came back with the soap she just took over washing. When I told her I could do it she just laughed and said that it would take me all morning so I washed up some other things while she worked the clothes over.

The sete-plus was so hot and all afternoon I was sitting in the sun. I already had a sunburn from sitting on the side of road, so I covered myself with some bags. They kept the sun off, but I was still baking. After we got to Gambia we stopped at a check point and some girls ran up with bags of cold water. It was probably the single most refreshing drink of my life. You just bite a little hole in the corner to get started. Jason took a picture so we could share the moment with you.

The whole time we were in the car I was thinking that I should be soaking up as much heat as I could before Germany, and I was right. It's really cold here. Today Jason and I went to an old town with our German friend, Anna. It was so beautiful! After a glass of hot chocolate and home hot spinach cake (more like quiche) we felt brave enough to try some ice cream. It was cold, but delicious!

(I borrowed the coat from Anna's sister. Definitely a good decision!)

The Trip

2008-04-13T13:18:00.000Z

Ok, so I said that the trip up was a long story for a less tired day. I'm sitting on the train from Darmstadt to Stuttgart, so I have a little time.

We were planning on leaving on Monday, but so many last minute things kept coming up that we didn't get to leave until Tuesday. Our alarm didn't go off on Tuesday morning, so instead of leaving the Youth Center at 5 am like we were planning, we didn't get to leave until 7:30. So we got to the place were we could take a sete-plus, bought our tickets, bargained with the driver about the price for our luggage, and then hit the road.

We had some amazing luck on the first ferry. We got there right as it was loading and we were the second to last car on. We drove on and it took off. You can wait like three hours for that ferry, so we were pumped. We crossed into Senegal without incident and got to Ziguinchor in the late morning and then the fun began. There were no sete-plus drivers who wanted to drive from Ziguinchor to Senegal and they were trying to sell us tickets for a fairly convoluted route with several car changes. Finally after enough people were yelling loud enough they called a driver.

The driver came and we paid for a ticket. The guy gave us change, but no tickets and then disappeared. Luckily, our Creole is good enough that we could insist that we had paid and some other people who saw us joined in, so they gave us the tickets. Then they tried to charge us four times the normal amount for our bags, and we were not having that! For some reason Guineans love to yell when they are bargaining, so like 20 minutes of bargaining later we paid double the normal price and a bunch of guys gave the car a push start to hit the road.

When we had been on the road for about 45 minutes the sete-plus broke down. It was early afternoon and we waited for more than two hours while people were taking parts out of the engine and banging them with a hammer. Miraculously, they got the car working, but not before I had gotten a bit of a sunburn. They good thing was that we broke down close to a gas station that had cold coke. Fanta Fiesta never tasted so good!

We crossed the border into the Gambia without any problems, but they did make us pay a little over two bucks each to get in. Then we got to the fairy in Senegal and to our amazement it was just docking on the right side of the river. We ate some interesting sandwiches with meat, noodles, and salad all between bread and chatted with some of the vendors while the fairy was unloading. Right as it started to load an ambulance came roaring up so they pulled all of the cars on and took off across the river without even waiting for the fairy to fill up. I don't really know if I can call that good luck, but it did make the river crossing much quicker.

We didn't have any problems crossing the last border into Senegal again, but the Gambians did make us pay a little over two bucks each again to get out of the country. After that we drove, and drove, and drove. With aching butts and knees we pulled into Dakar at about one in the morning on Wednesday.

We found a taxi driver who spoke enough English to take us to the place that was supposed to be right by the WEC guest house. He dropped us off, but unfortunately, we couldn't find the guest house. We found another guy who spoke English at a restaurant and he knew exactly where the guest house was, or so he said. He took us to the world learning institute. It did have a "w" in the name, but that was about it. Then he said that he knew for sure where it was so we went with him again. This time he took us to a bilingual school. It was about 2:30 am and we were exhausted from the trip and from dragging our bags all over Senegal, so we asked him if he knew where a cheap hotel was. He took us to a little hotel and it was definitely cheap. Scary, but cheap.

We could stay in the room until noon, so we took a shower and went right to bed. Jason woke up around 10:30, went to a nearby gas station, and bought us a huge chocolate bar and some strawberry milk for breakfast. It was sugary and nice :)

We left the hotel at noon and went to a gas station that had a pizza restaurant and a chicken restaurant in it. We spent the rest of the day munching pizza and chips and chicken and french fries and finished it all off with a pound of coconut ice cream (which we split). It was our celebration of normal American food... hehe

From there we got a sweet price on a taxi to the airport. The ticket agents were helpful and knowledgeable, which we were not expecting, so that was a pleasant surprise. The flights to Brussels and then to Frankfurt were smooth and pleasant.

In Frankfurt we had a bit of a scare when only one of our bags came out on the belt. We waited for about 15 or 20 minutes after the belt stopped going (because the screen still said our flight on it) and sure enough it popped out with the luggage from the next flight. The lady from the German YFC guesthouse picked us up and we have been having a great time since then. The first real nights sleep in the YFC guesthouse was amazing and the second one was pretty nice as well :)

So, we are here and safe. On Monday when I realized that we were not going to have a chance to leave I decided that this trip was in God's hands. Every time I started to wonder if we were going to make it or worry about something I just prayed about it (so I was praying a lot, but not worrying at all) and it almost couldn't have gone better.

So, that's the trip in a nutshell. We have been having fun in Germany but the efficient and nice public transportation system has been quite confusing. I snapped a picture of Jason puzzling over the bus route.

Yesterday we went to the Mercedes-Benz Museum and Jason was quite giddy when he was preparing his camera gear.

We Have Arrived

2008-04-10T16:18:00.000Z

Well, we had an exciting trip up here, but that’s a long story for a less tired day We arrived in Germany this morning and a lady who works for YFC Germany picked us up from the airport and took us to the guest house - which is amazing. We have a totally cute room. We took our first showers with hot water since December and they were completely wonderful.

It is FREEZING here (to me) so I love that the kitchen has a sweet coffee machine and hot water with lots of tea all the time. I’ve drunk like 6 mugs of it already today.

There is a YFC team staying here in the guest house from South Africa. They are here to travel around Germany doing dramas and speaking in schools and churches. They are all around our age and they all speak English so we’ve been having fun hanging out with them.

Today we took a freezing walk to some stores in the little town here in search of mittens. We didn’t find any mittens, but we did find something amazing at a little gem called Aldi - broccoli!!!!!! (I sang that last word in a loud high voice, but I don’t really know how to type it like that... hehe) I will leave you with a picture of me kissing my broccoli as the "picture of the day" for today.

News from Gabú

2008-04-07T16:20:00.000Z

Gabú is one of the 8 regions in Guinea-Bissau and it’s also the name of a city in the center of that region. It’s in the interior, in the middle of a very strong Muslim area. We have some Brazilian friends who work on a Youth with a Mission (YWAM) base there. They were in Bissau this past weekend and they had some stories for me!

The people who work at the YWAM base and the people in the discipleship training classes at the base have been doing tons of stuff in the community. A week or so ago one of the Guineans who is in their discipleship training class was out in the city of Gabú telling people about what Jesus did in his life. While he was talking he said that all people sin and the only way to have forgiveness from that sin is though Jesus. Word of what he was doing somehow got to the regional authority and they came to the YWAM base and told them that from now on no one from YWAM or associated in any way with YWAM could say those things about Jesus in or around the city of Gabú.

A few days later a Christian man was grabbed outside of a church in Gabú and badly beaten by some people that he didn’t know. After that those people went on the radio and said that that’s what happens to Guinean Christians.

Needless to say the mood amongst the missionaries in Gabú has been a little down lately. About a week ago a group of missionaries from YWAM went to a little beach on a river outside of Gabú for a day to relax. They brought some of the people who are in the discipleship classes with them. I heard the story of what happened in Creole, so some of it is a little bit difficult to translate, but basically one of the Guineans who was with them fell into the water. I am not sure if he hit his head before he fell or if he hit it on something under the water, but he was unconscious. Another group of people from the YWAM base was walking along looking at fish and thought that they saw a foot in the water. One of the guys dove under and pulled on the foot. He dragged the guy out of the water. It was the guy from the YWAM base and by this point he had been under water for about 20 minutes. He was dead when they pulled him out. They yelled and all of the other people came running. They tried to resuscitate him, but they couldn’t. They worked on him for a while and then they stopped because they knew they couldn’t do anything.

All of the people from YWAM started praying. Their prayers got louder and louder and they were asking God for a miracle. After some time passed all of a sudden the guy started breathing and opened his eyes. God had literally raised him from the dead. You don’t see that everyday.

It was a powerful reminder to them when things seem their worst God is still able to do His best. When we can’t do anything, He can. Sometimes life seems like complete crap, but our God raises the dead! It’s just amazing to me that a God like that wants to know me!

One Pure and Holy Passion

2008-03-25T16:21:00.000Z

On Sunday morning Jason and I went to a sunrise Easter service. It started around 5:30 in the morning and it was outside, so when we got there is was still dark. We joined the crowd and started singing. As my eyes got adjusted to the low light I saw someone who was outside of the group. He was over on the edge of the field singing. Sometimes his hands were in the air, sometimes he was on his knees, and sometimes he was just standing looking into the sky while he was singing. It was obvious that he didn’t think anyone was watching him. In the darkness he was just singing to God.

After I saw him I started thinking about the freedoms that Christ gives us that we take for granted everyday. I have told you before that Satan’s power is real here. People make sacrifices to him. They make promises to him and their lives are controlled by him. They live in deep fear of the power of Satan in their lives.

I have never had to live with fear like that. When I got saved Jesus cleaned my heart, and I started a relationship with Him. I talk to Him and He guides me. He takes away loneliness and hopelessness and shows me the purpose and reason for my life. It’s really a beautiful thing.

The people here have all of that. God comes into their lives and starts a relationship. But it’s also so much more than that. God breaks the power of Satan. He takes away a fear that has always been a part of them.

Most of the time I was trying to be respectful, but sometimes I couldn’t help looking over at the guy on the side. As it started to get a little bit brighter I realized that this guy was one of my friends who works at the Youth Center with us, William.

William grew up in an animist home and his whole extended family participated in sacrifices. He had a lot of problems in his life and at one point he started going to a Catholic church. In the Catholic church here in Bissau the services are short, the people do not read the Bible for themselves, and many of them are completely ignorant about the most basic things of Christianity. William said that he got involved in everything that he could. He was in the choir, he went to a young adult group, he was there every time the doors were open, but he did not find Jesus. Lots of the people in the church came on Sundays and then during the week they were still involved in their sacrifices. When they got sick they still went to the witch doctor and they still lived in fear of the power of Satan.

He left the church for a while and some terrible stuff happened in his life. One day, about three years ago someone told him about Jesus and he said that everything changed. The pieces finally fit together and he understood his life. He walked away from everything and committed his whole life to knowing God and telling other people about Him. Jason and I eat lunch with him and a few other people everyday and sometimes he tells us about conversations that he has been having with Muslim or Animist friends. He shakes his head and says, "They just don’t understand" and then he gets a smile on his face and as he talks about Jesus and what Jesus has done in his life.

On Easter morning the worship that I saw was the product of a life that has been changed completely. William wasn’t thinking about anything but the sacrifice that Jesus made to have a relationship with him and the power that brought Jesus back to life.

As I have been thinking about this over the past two days one of my all-time favorite songs has been playing in my mind: One Pure and Holy Passion. It’s a really simple song, here are the words:

Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after You

To know and follow hard after you
To grow as your disciple in your truth
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing you, my Lord
Lead me on and I will run after you
Lead me on and I will run after you

if my friend killed my goat...

2008-03-20T16:23:00.000Z

It’s possible that most of you have heard the joke about Sunday school where the teacher is describing something small and furry that lives in a tree. She asks the children what it is. One little boy pipes up and says it sounds like a squirrel, but the right answer is always "Jesus". Yeah, I know it’s a bit of a groaner, but I bring it up because I had a similar experience today when I was grading homework.

Jovens Para Cristo (Youth for Christ) is a Christian school, so we do talk about Jesus. We learn verses and read things from the Bible and have discussion about those things. We also learn grammar and practice discussing lots of other things. Yesterday we learned about how to talk about imaginary situations and consequences – ex: If something funny happened I would blog about it.

On the homework I gave the students some imaginary situations and asked them to make a complete sentence with the situation and a possible consequence. One of the situations was "Your friend was taking care of your goat and it died." Most people put answers that I would expect: "If my friend was taking care of my goat and it died I could take the meat and eat it." or "If my friend was taking care of my goat and it died I might never forgive him for what he did." But, one answer was different. It felt just like a typical "Sunday school" answer and it made me laugh a bit, so I thought I would share it with you: "If my friend was taking care of my goat and it died I would give him a grace of the only Lord in the sky to help that he or she gave to my goat while he died." hehe, yup, still makes me laugh.

Keep Emily Cool

2008-03-19T16:24:00.000Z

So there is something that has been making me laugh every time I think about it and I wanted to run it by you guys. Most of you know my friend Fernando (from Guinea-Bissau, came to the States for 6 months to study English at the University of West Florida recently arrived back). Yesterday after we taught some American idioms to our third level English class (like a chicken with its head cut off, frog in my throat, butterflies in my stomach, etc) I was talking to him about the things that he learned in his English classes in the States. I asked him if they had done any idioms, and he said not exactly but their teachers had taught them some American expressions like: "that’s banging" meaning "that’s cool", and my favorite: "crackalackin’ ".

Have I been out of America so long that crackalackin’ is a real thing that people actualy say? Sometimes I feel like I have lost touch with American pop culture a little bit - I don’t know who the current Idol contestants are and I am not really interested in Brittnay and her baby problems. But have I lost touch this much? Tell me honestly, have you used the word crackalackin’ in the past month??? Do I need to add it to my vocabulary so I can be a crackalackin individual (Was that it? Did I do it right? I need to know... )?

Keep Emily cool - fill me in on the shizzle (Wait, do people still say shizzle? Did people ever say shizzle? I’m getting so confused ).

a Few Things

2008-03-17T16:25:00.000Z

Right now I am super-excited . One of the ladies who has worked at the youth center forever became a Christian this weekend. People have been sharing the gospel with her for years and she has believed in Jesus for a while, but she didn’t want to give up her sacrifices and ceremonies, so she hadn’t given her heart to God. She has five kids, the oldest of which are teenagers, and her husband died a few years ago.

She was really sick and in the hospital this past week and when she got back she told one of our friends here that she had decided to give her life to Jesus. He talked to her for a while and she seemed really confident about it. She wasn’t back at work today because she is still recovering, but I am going to go visit her soon.

It is not that common for someone her age to become a Christian here because by that point most people are really involved in doing the ceremonies for themselves and for their families and they are responsible for the sacrifices for their children, etc.

I can’t even imagine the freedom after more than 40 years of living in fear of Satan. I also can’t imagine how hard it would be to walk away from your entire way of life. She has been released from the promises and pacts she has made with Satan. She has a God that she can know and who wants to know her. Wow! Ok, so like I said I am super excited.

On a different note, we only have three weeks left here, which is totally unbelievable to me… Seriously, where did the time go this time?

When we leave here we have a layover in Frankfurt, Germany. While we were booking the tickets the agent told us that the price of the ticket didn’t change if the layover was a few hours or a month, so we opted for a longer one so that we could see a little bit of Europe. We have 19 days and we are planning on spending most of the time in Germany with a quick trip to Salzburg, Austria and Prague in the Czech Republic. I am sure we’ll take lots of pictures and Jason might even post a movie or two

Over the past few weeks we have mostly been working. Jason taped some cool new language videos (like the Fula one), but he hasn’t had a chance to edit them yet. We did visit one of our friends, Roberta, on her son’s first birthday so I thought I would share some pictures of that with you.

Here’s me with the birthday boy, Meno. He was in a really good mood and for some reason I made him laugh a lot.

He really liked it when we put our heads together. He would laugh and then squeal and wiggle. I can’t really convey the cuteness in a picture, but trust me, it was adorable.

We have gotten to be friends with our neighbors here, Charlotte, and Salva. This past Friday night we went to a concert with them and we had a good time. Charlotte is from France and she is teaching and supervising teachers at a French school here in Bissau. (She studied English in college and then went to Portugal for a few years and taught there, so she speaks French, Portuguese, English, and now Creole.) Salva is her boyfriend and he is a doctor from Spain. He has spent some time in Portugal, and I’m not really sure where else, but he speaks good English too. At the concert we were joined by another French woman, her Guinean boyfriend, and three people from Spain. It’s so funny to be from all over and have Creole as a common language.

Charlotte and Salva had an oyster baking party today so we stopped over and had a few. Correction, I had a few, Jason ate about 40. They had a huge bag full of them, and they went down to the port to buy them, so they were fresh and pretty cheap. I took a few pictures and I thought I would share them with you guys.

I know this picture is a little blury, but if you look at the right side of this oyster you can clearly see the letters USA... We really have no idea how it got there, but when Charlotte opened it up, there it was. Weird!

This is Charlotte about to start munching some party food.

One of the benefits of living near the ocean – big shrimp. They were pretty good too! You just take off the head with the guts, peel off the shell and legs and pop them in your mouth!

So, that’s about it right now. See you soon.

Wild and Dangerous

2008-03-09T16:30:00.000Z

You know how sometimes something you read just really connects with you on a deep level? I had that experience today. I picked up a little book called A Boy Who Cried Abba by Brennan Manning. It is a parable so it's not really a long story (I read it in about half an hour), but it was powerful!

The basic plot of the story is that there is a young Mexican boy named Willie Juan whose terrible life is transformed from the inside out by a series of encounters with a medicine man. The medicine that the man has is free and it's not for healing your body primarily, it's for healing your soul. At one point in the story the boy goes to the Cave of Bright Darkness to meet the medicine man (El Shaddai) and before he comes to him a voice calls out his name. Willie Juan answers, and asks who are you? This is the response:

"To most I am known as Danger, Willie Juan. I make my presence known in water, wind, and fire. I am Spirit, without shape, form, or face. Those who seek safety try to summon me like a tame lapdog. They crave security instead of growth. They have no tolerance for mystery, certain that they can know everything knowable. The week-kneed do not love Danger. They are afraid I will call them to become what they are not. They call me Comforter for all the wrong reasons and are surprised when no comfort comes to them."

Wow! Take a minute and read that again…

Right now I am doing a conversation series in the Sunday night English service we have here watching and discussing the movie Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I remember reading that series of books over and over as a kid and all throughout they talk about Aslan (who represents Jesus) as "not a tame lion". I always loved that and it always scared me. Here in this story the name of the Holy Spirit is Danger and that makes me feel the same way.

I do not serve a safe God. I do not serve a God who wants me to know everything and feel secure and comfortable. I serve a God who can change me, transform me, stretch me, and take me places that I've never dreamed of. A God who has more for me than just surviving life. A God who can heal me on the deepest levels and use me to bring healing to others. He has a path for me – a purpose to fulfill the desires that He has placed in my heart.

Does that sound like the God you know? If it doesn't you're missing out. I think that we should let Him out of the safe box that we have shoved Him in and see what a wild, dangerous, fiercely-loving God wants to do with us…

A Few Thoughts

2008-03-07T16:32:00.000Z

Well we've got just about a month left and the time is flying. I am excited to go home and see everyone! I am also sad to be leaving. I love my work and I love the people here.

Jason and I have been thinking and praying a lot about the future and sometimes it seems like we're just going in circles. I want to know everything now so that I can get ready for it all. I know that's not how God works, but I've been praying so long that I just want feel some resolution.

Last Sunday night in the English service here we were singing a song called Step by Step. I think most of you have heard it (I will seek You in the morning, and I will learn to walk in Your ways, and step by step You'll lead me, and I will follow You all of my days, etc). When Fernando was introducing the song he had Ruth walk across the stage and he walked behind her stepping exactly where she stepped. He talked about how this song teaches us the way that we should follow God.

When he was talking it kind of hit me that Ruth could've turned right or left and because Fernando was following her he would have turned that way too. It's the same with God I think. Sometimes He shows me where He is going, but sometimes He just asks me to step in His steps. I would like to know if I am going to be turning right so that I can get ready with all of my right turn stuff, but it should be enough for me to know that if I am following God each day He won't leave me. He will stay one step ahead of me, revealing each day. That is what He has promised and that is all I need to know.

So, right now is step-by-step - walking behind God, following the desires He has put into my heart, making plans loosely, fully expecting Him to turn at any minute.

As I have changed my focus from "the future" to right now I have felt a big burden lift off of my shoulders. I was getting so frustrated about not making big decisions that I was not feeling at peace with any of my small decisions. Not any more (at least until God has to teach me again…). Right now I am content with what I know and I am learning to be content with an ever changing picture of my future.

Bad Hair Day

2008-02-21T16:32:00.000Z

Lots of people have commented that they liked my hair when it was braided so I thought I would show you a few "after" shots...

This one is from the first time I got it braided. I had a lot of other hair braided in with it, so it was still kind of seperated into large chunks when I took it out.

This one is from this past time when the braids were all close on my head. It was only my hair so it just turned into a huge friz-ball. Serious bad hair day...

In other news, last summer one of our friends from Guinea-Bissau, Fernando, came to the US for 6 months to study. He just returned here last Sunday and we have been very happy to see him. He is going to take over my job when we leave so we have been working together.

Today he was talking to the students in one of the English classes about America and he told the students that if they are not happy here in Guinea-Bissau they won't be happy anywhere, not even in America. They were skeptical. They said, "but what about 50cent? He's living the life. I want a life like that." Yeah, some life... And besides for every one 50cent there are thousands of other guys living on welfare or with their mother, sending out demo CDs, and waiting for the fame to roll in.

Many young people here think that if they could just leave Africa they would be rich and famous and have no problems in their lives. Just your typical grass is greener thing. One of the things that struck Fernando the most when he was in the States was how many people there are unhappy; way more than in Guinea-Bissau (one of the five poorest countries in the world). He said that it just really drove home the point that happiness comes from within.

Coffee, Babies, and Hair

2008-02-13T16:34:00.000Z

Another vacation has come and gone... I've always been a list maker, but I've noticed that as our time here is coming to a close (yeah, we have less than two months...) I've started to make ridiculous lists. I will write down 20 things to do in an amount of time that would be more realistically suited to 2. I'm just not sure how we are going to be able to get it all done...

On a happy note, Fernando is going to be coming back here from the States today or maybe tomorrow. He was in Dakar (Senegal) on Monday, so he could've made it back yesterday, but he had a few things to do there first. We are all really excited to see him again. He told Jase on the phone last week that two of the things he is going to miss about American food are starbucks and brownies. I have developed some pretty awesome brownies over here, so that should help a little. Jason and I love coffee too, and because of the heat we have started to really love iced coffee. When we first told our Brazilian friends about cold coffee, they made some pretty terrible faces, but when we had them over for tacos last Tuesday we changed their minds. We made iced coffee drinks in the blender and they were a big hit.

Jason and Gilson enjoying some "café fria"

You know how sometimes you have a bit of a bad day and you need something to remind you that everything really is good? I was having one of those days on Saturday when my friend Ligia stopped by. She and her husband were participating in a conference here at the Youth Center for a few hours and she had brought her little three-month-old, Manasés. She didn't mind keeping him with her, but she knows that I love babies so she didn't know if I would want to play with him for a few hours. I (of course) said yes and we had a good morning.

Me and Manasés hanging out right before he fell asleep.

I decided for fun that I would get my hair braided, so I did that on Monday. It's not going to be a permanent style for me, but it's fun for something different. I think I kind of look bald, but the people here really like it.

Putting in the braids took under an hour because we didn't use any fake hair. When I got my hair done last time it took 4, so I was relieved.

The finished product.

Wow, I still can't believe we are leaving here in less than two months!!!!!!! See y'all soon!

I'm terrified of mice!

2008-02-06T16:35:00.000Z

It's funny how you can think something is so bad and then something else comes along that is way worse… Life is always like that. Someone else always has it worse than you do.

Now really, honestly, I can't complain. I shouldn't complain. But something just happened that is so gross I can't help but let it out. You see, we have mice in our kitchen. I am deathly terrified of mice. Now to those of you who grew up on farms, or just possess amazingly strong stomachs I apologize. I am terrible with rodents.

We have tried some things to make the mice want to leave. We put all of the food in ziplock bags, but they ate through them. I have resorted to a few large rubermade totes for most of our storage and smaller tupperware for everything else. Alas, we live in a guest house so we have different people in and out all the time. For some reason none of them seem as concerned as me about the whole situation and they leave food out a lot.

Most of the time the mice are kind enough to only come out at night, so all I see is their ever-present poop. A few weeks ago Jason killed one with a broom. Then a few days later I opened the silverware drawer in our big wooden cabinet in the kitchen and almost put my hand right on top of one. I screamed and ran outside to call Jason (who was on top of the roof adjusting an internet thing). He got two other guys and together they pulled out the drawer, the mouse jumped high in the air and when it landed it was promptly smashed to death with a broom and fed to the dog. So yay! Our mouse problem was gone, no worries! Or so I thought.

Even though I wasn't seeing any more mice (we seemed to have killed off the two boldest) I was still seeing a lot of poop. Then on Monday night someone (with a last name of Atkins, but not me) overfilled the water filter so that on Tuesday morning water had filtered through and overflowed all over the counter, floor, and most annoyingly into the drawer under the filter. I took the drawer out, dried off all of the utensils, and Jason put it out in the sun to dry out. Later that day we had two Brazilian couples over for tacos (they were really really delicious) and when I bent down to get the mugs out of the cabinet below where the drawer had been I saw a dead mouse in the back. We're pretty sure it died of being smashed to death when the drawer closed. The drawers stick really bad so most of the time I close them with a hip ramming. I was totally grossed out but kept it together and Jason and I didn't really discuss it until the company left.

After that we had to go do a staff internet training, etc, etc, and when we did finally get back to the kitchen the lights were off, which is weird because I always leave them on. The switch by the door doesn't work so you have to walk all the way across the pitch black kitchen to turn them on, and that just seems like a death wish to me. Anyway Jason and slowly made our way to the light switch and when we turned it on two mice jumped out of the dish rack and ran down behind the stove. Again, screaming burst from my mouth. Then more mice ran around the other side of the room past me and behind the fridge (Jason says they were the same ones, but I am skeptical). So I ran upstairs and we didn't get a chance to take care of the dead mouse last night.

Today Jason and I went down to the kitchen to remove the carcass. Really Jason was the one who was going to do the removing, I just sat in a chair shuddering. As I said before, deathly terrified of mice… I knew that something was wrong when Jason said "Wow!" and started laughing. I asked him what was up but he said that if he told me I wouldn't sleep for a week. Well, then I had to know, so I asked again. He said that the body was full of big maggots that had eaten pretty much all of the meat. I did not want to see it and I did not allow him to take a picture (you can thank me for that since he definitely would've made me post it here). Actually I just started crying. Jason disposed of the mouse and then I asked him if he thought we should check the other drawers just to be sure. He pulled out one of the two other drawers and sure enough another dead mouse, this one creased in an L-shape from being smashed by the back of the drawer (or so I was told). This was just too much for me so I retreated to the upstairs to share the story with you. Jason has joined me and informed me that the other mouse was not full of maggots, but that is a small comfort.

So really, the worm in the tomato was a little shocking but only because it was unexpected, this was just gross. I know it could be way worse than this. There are rats here that are more than a foot tall and really fat. Like I said, I can't complain, I shouldn't complain… and yet here I am. I mean, I just thought you should know...

Kenya 2

2008-02-03T16:36:00.000Z

The conflict in Kenya still rages on. Almost 900 people have been killed and even though the government is currently negotiating a peace deal, the people on the ground have said that won't change anything. To many of them this is long overdue. When I read the stories and see the hate in the eyes of the people in the pictures it almost makes me want to give up. I feel like rebellion is literally popping up everywhere in Africa right now. Sudan still has not found peace, Chad has rebels storming the royal palace as we speak, and in South Africa police are raiding churches have given refuge to people fleeing from Zimbabwe.

As I was thinking about all of this I ran across a letter that a YFC missionary in Nairobi published on YFC International's website. When I read it I remembered that we will never be able to make sense of the things that are happening around us, but we can stand for things that are real in the middle of all of it. The purpose of the church in the world is to bring unity and healing; to tell people that the only real way to erase hate is to accept God's forgiveness so completely that it allows you to extend that forgiveness to other people.

January 2008 ~ Nairobi, Kenya

"As I write, rain has just started. It is hot in Kenya - our summer. Not only is the weather hot, but so are emotions. The rain feels good – it seems to cool things down.

As the events of the last few weeks unfolded, one thing became clear – this is NOT just about elections, it goes much deeper. This is a struggle for justice, for people from different tribes to dialog and forgive one another for injustices going back several generations. It is a spiritual battle, not physical. If we could see into the spirit realm, we would see what Peretti wrote so eloquently about a few years ago.

The greatest tragedy is that the Church has been divided. One pastor preaches in favour of one candidate, another in favour of someone else. A Kikuyu Christian prays this one will win, a Luo prays for another, and a Masaai prays for yet another to win. Which prayer will God answer? Today the Lord spoke in our church...and in many churches in Kenya. Unity...God is not confused...there is a divine plan, and our prayers needs to be, 'Your will be done, not mine.'

We (the Church) are a chosen people… a royal priesthood. What do priests do? They mediate between the people and a Holy God. They offer sacrifices and prayers for the people, pleading YOUR will be done, Lord. Bring us the leader of Your choosing, because You know the heart of the candidates. Bring a man/woman after Your own heart, Lord, no matter the tribe.

We must also serve God, not any other person or idol, as did Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They said "God is able to save us, BUT EVEN IF HE DOES NOT, we will not serve other gods!" (Daniel 3:17-18)

When we pray, "Your will be done,", when we serve God alone, there is unity in the Church. We don't ask, is God for ODM or PNU, or Democrat or Republican? When God brings leaders to rule over His people, then we can build a united nation. Otherwise we have chaos! Join us in praying Your will be done, Lord!"

The reason that I am here is to spread the life-changing message of God to as many people as I can so that people can find hope and peace and make sense out of their lives. That doesn't only happen in West Africa. God wants you to be doing exactly the same thing in exactly the place where He has put you too. This is not a quick process; it happens one person at a time. But, if we do not start reaching those people things like this will continue. People need to have something to live for and if we don't tell them what they were made to live for who will?

Waiter, there’s a bicu in my tomato!

2008-02-02T16:37:00.000Z

I know that wherever you are can have a bad day. I've had plenty of days like that in America. (Like the day that I slid off the road on the way to work and had to call a tow truck to get back on the road. Oh, I did this twice in the same morning...)

Anyway, yesterday was one of those days. I learned a long time ago that there is no point going through something unpleasant if you don't laugh about it later. So, I will fill you in on a little part of it.

We have a break this week and I've really been looking forward to it, so of course last week had tons of problems. Nothing major just a lot of minor exasperations, but all of that ended in a loud way yesterday. There is a girl who goes to the market for me and for some reason I have a terrible time getting her to understand exactly what I want. So on Friday I was taking the groceries out of the bag after I got back from class. I was disappointed when I saw that she had bought the wrong kind of beans and I was thinking about how I could have described them any more clearly. While I was distracted by my thoughts I picked up the first tomato something moved on my finger. I dropped the tomato and when I saw the nasty worm that had been touching my finger I literally jumped and screamed. I included a picture for you.

*Note: His head kind of came off when I threw the tomato and that made some of his guts squirt out, so that's what the nasty green stuff is. Also, this is Jason's hand holding the tomato because I didn't really want to go there again.

It really wasn't the end of the world, just the bicu (bee-choo) that broke the camel's back.

Oh yeah, I have another funny story regarding food from last week too. Jason and I eat lunch together with some of the other workers at the Youth Center each day. One day this past week we had fish. The lady who cooks for the group of us usually cuts them in half (not long ways, but where the belt would be if they needed to wear a belt for their fish pants) and fries them. So they have the head, tail, skin, bones, everything except the guts. The fish are about 8 inches long.

Anyway, I picked up a tail piece and a big, round, organ-looking thing about the size of a tootsie roll (except more oval-like) fell out. I looked at one of the guys and said, "What is this?" He said, "It's the egg" so I put it in the pile of bones that we don't eat. He looked confused and asked, "Aren't you going to eat that?" I said, "No, wait, do people eat this???" He said, "Yeah! If you don't want it I'll eat it!" So I gladly handed it over. Actually that day all of the fish were mature females and they all had large ovaries full of eggs and Celestino ate all of them - I think like 5 or 6 total. I was kind of grossed out but I did eat a tiny little bite of one that was broken. I didn't eat the actual outside part, just a few of the eggs. They were really tiny and I think each ovary had like 1000 of them.

The guys were laughing at me and Jason for being weirded out about the fish eggs so Jason asked them if they would eat a cow testicle. They all laughed and said of course. Then they proceeded to tell us how people eat the cow skin and that hooves make really nutritious soup for people who are sick. It made me realize that the food we eat over here is really good compared to the food that we could be eating over here.

On a related note, Jason and I like to try new things so when we saw "Africa Cola" we couldn't resist. Here's Jason trying to drink it.

I think he forgot to take the top off... Actually after this picture we did open it up and take a sip... aaaaaand then we closed it. You see, even though it looks the same as a regular old Coke it kind of tasted like a mix of Coke, Ginger Ale, spiced gum drops, and Lysol. Needless to say, not fantastic.

Kenya

2008-01-28T16:39:00.000Z

I don't know what you guys have heard about the problem right now in Kenya, but it's not looking good. The real problem goes back about 500 years when Europe starting colonizing Africa. They divided it up into regions without understanding the impact of their decisions. For thousands of years Africa had been divided into many kingdoms, each primarily composed of and ruled by one tribe. When the Europeans came they chopped up the land in to large areas putting many different tribes together into new "countries". When the African countries starting gaining independence from their colonial powers the tribal loyalties did not disappear. In Kenya alone there are over 40 different tribes.

Usually when a man from one tribe is elected president almost all of the other officials he appoints are from his tribe too. Elections are very emotionally charged events and they are full of corruption because each tribe wants to claim power. In Kenya they had a presidential election on December 27, 2007. Basically it was looking like a new guy was going to win the election and then the results were kept from people for a day or so and then the current president announced that he had won. There are tons of irregularities, local announcements not matching up with national announcements, more votes for the presidential election then for the parliamentary elections on the same ballot, more votes than registered voters in some areas (like a 115% turnout in one region). In a lot of regions the kerosene in the lamps of the vote counters went out, so they went home to sleep and continue counting the next day, but when they returned there were more ballots then they thought they had left. There was also a lack of ballots in a lot of voting places, causing long lines, and in some places whole groups of people were left off of the voter registries: like everyone with a last name starting in "O". Because people in the same tribe often have the same or similar last names, many people think this was done on purpose. Outside officials believe that both sides were involved in the vote rigging.

The government of Kenya is consistently ranked in the top 10 most corrupt governments in the world and the people have had enough. The current conflict started when the tribes of the two men who were running for president, the Kikuyu tribe and the Luo tribe, started killing each other in protest, but it soon became much more. Many places in Africa people don't really think that land can be sold. You have to have a blood claim to the land you live on or farm (passed on from one person to the next in a family). So a lot of people are using this conflict to attack people who live on the land that they feel their family has a blood claim to. Right now over 700 people have been killed and more than a quarter of a million are homeless.

I write this blog because I don't know how much people know about what is going on over here now and because I just want to say that this problem is not intirely of the Kenyan's making. Tribal tensions are one of the biggest issues in Africa and I don't see how they are going to go away anytime soon. It almost makes me want to scrap all of these countries imposed by colonial rule and start over drawing different borders.

Please be praying for Kenya: that the leaders would realize what their selfish grabs for power are doing to the people, that the people would realize that terrorizing their neighbors will not lead to anything good, and that the spirits of hatred and anger there would leave.

If you want to see some pictures of the conflict:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7209760.stm

*I got this information from the BBC, transparency international, my studies of African culture, the history of Kenya, and personal observations.

Good for a smile

2008-01-23T16:40:00.000Z

So I showed you the picture of my class when they graduated, but I didn't tell you some of the funny things that happened along the way. In my class I taught 10 different American idioms every week, but sometimes the meaning didn't quite come across right. For example, here are a few gems from the homework: "I really like Jesus Christ, I think I'm falling in love with him." also "I am really tired because I've been looking like a dog all day." (supposed to be working like a dog). Just last week someone wrote: "Sometimes it's hard to break the ice cream." (a little different than break the ice)

Sometimes however, I think they understand the idioms very well. For example: "If you have two girlfriends you will always be in the dog house."

I also taught them the difference between active and passive sentences – "Emily ate the cake." and "The cake was eaten by Emily." So, I laughed really hard when I read: "Many Guineans were baked in ovens for people to eat at Christmas." At least I think that was a mistake...

I still really like teaching a lot. The other English teachers are doing a great job too. This semester we started a new night school program and we are doing some new things with conversation classes. I also started up the Sunday evening English service again and I am organizing that too. Most of the time I'm going to be the one preaching in the service, so that will be a new thing for me. It has all been a lot of work but I think it's going well.

The third week in February we are going to have a break so Jason and I will be doing a little traveling. We are going to go to Gabu to see the schools that Youth with a Mission has started there and then we are going to stay with some friends of ours, Basilio and Gisa, in Gabu for a few days. They are missionaries from Brazil. Basilio is a pastor so we are going to see what the church is doing out there.

After that we are headed to Sinchã Botchi for a few days. I am going to take beads and have some jewelry making classes for women as a way to talk to them about God and teach them a new skill. Then it's back to the salt mines.

As most of you know we have internet at the Youth Center now. It's not fast, but I get your emails right when you send them (during the hours that we have power) and sometimes I am sitting at my computer and can even email you right back. Skype works but only if no one else is doing anything online. So anyway, feel free to email me or even post a comment because I will get it way sooner than before .